DAVID HILTBRAND – Deader Than Disco. Avon, paperback original, April 2005.

   Here’s the first paragraph of my review of Hiltbrand’s first mystery, Killer Solo, which came out in January, 2004:

   I was going to start this review by stating that this is the best rock music detective novel I have ever read. It then occurred to me that this may be the only rock music detective novel I have ever read. I know there are others. Unless there are some that aren’t coming to mind right now, though, I just haven’t read them.

   Deader Than Disco, Hiltbrand’s second novel, also marks the second appearance of rock ’n roll detective Jim McNamara. I may as well say, up front and for the record, that Killer Solo is the better of the two, but with no other contender in sight, that leaves the first book still in the top position.

   Although other real life people in the world of show business (Gwenyth Paltrow, Sheryl Crow) are mentioned in passing, McNamara’s client is only an excellent clone (and reasonable facsimile) of singer superstar Madonna, a lady named Angel (last name Chiavone), who’s deeply involved with the murder of a superstar pro basketball player in her home, after a party, and she is strictly not talking about it, not to any one, and certainly not to McNamara, who was actually hired by Angel’s publicist, a lady named Lani.

   McNamara’s own demons, the ones that forced him out of active show business himself, drinking and a bad drug problem, are past him, and yet not entirely. He finds AA meetings to attend wherever he goes, which in this book includes a long stint in Hollywood, followed by a shorter one in Manhattan, and all the while keeping in touch with his sponsor back in New England. The latter being, by the way, a very good way of having someone around to bounce ideas off of.

   As a writer, Hiltbrand has a neat way of characterizing his characters quickly and sharply, even the ones who are only passing through. About 80% of McNamara’s investigation goes down well, but once he decides that the decamped diva has disappeared off to Detroit (well, Michigan, but it doesn’t match the alliteration) – and how’d he know, I do not know – all of the well-characterized characters fade into the background. With at that point only three players to play around with (Angel, MacNamara, and the killer) the well-honed tale (up to then) fritters itself away into a badly rehearsed made-for-cable late night thriller.

   Chapter 40 begins with “It took a while to sort things out.” But unlike some complicated detective stories with lots of twists and turns in the plot, three more pages and it’s over.

— May 2005


Bibliographic Note: The third and final Jim McNamara novel was Dying to Be Famous (Harper, 2006).