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KILLER SOLO (Avon Books/ An Imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers; On Sale December 30, 2003; ISBN: 0060549432; $6.99US/$9.99 Can) by David Hiltbrand is an explosive debut that explores the murderous underbelly of the wild, wild world of rock ‘n’ roll. Blending the razor-sharp pop-culture wit of Harlan Coben’s Myron Bolitar mysteries with the dark edge of Lawrence Block, David Hiltbrand creates a fascinating new hero in rock ‘n roll detective Jim McNamara.“Live fast, die young, and leave a beautiful corpse.” While these words were used to describe James Dean’s outlook on life, they are also, far too often, the job description for young entrants into the world of rock ‘n roll. Jim McNamara is the man charged with examining all the beautiful corpses.
Jim McNamara is a detective. Of sorts. He is an investigator for an insurance company that covers rock tours. When a claim is filed, McNamara is called in. Trashed hotel room? Call McNamara. Stripped gears on the tour bus? Call McNamara. Dead roadie?
Call the police – after you call McNamara.
In KILLER SOLO Jim is asked to investigate the suspicious death of a roadie from the Shirley Slaughterhouse tour. The roadie fell 250 feet from a catwalk, and if he did it in the performance of his duties, the insurance kicks in. Enter McNamara. As his investigation proceeds, he discovers that there’s a lot more happening on the tour than a few accidents. Gun-toting drug dealers. Religious protesters. An OD-ed guitarist. It seems that someone has decided that the lead singer should be the next body on the slab. It’s just another day at the office for the rock ‘n roll detective.
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FORT LAUDERDALE SUN-SENTINEL
May 9, 2004
BYLINE: Oline Cogdill
“Killer Solo” by David Hiltbrand; Avon ($6.99) Here’s a situation so ripe for mystery
fiction, it’s surprising the idea hasn’t been snapped up before: Rock tours are among the
insurance industry’s biggest customers. And all that sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll pave the way for jealousy, greed, power grabs and all the other good themes that make up good mystery plots.
Yes, there are dozens of mysteries that revolve around music and even several with insurance investigators. But no author has thought to merge the two, certainly not creating the exciting, pulsating kind of plot that entertainment journalist David Hiltbrand brings to his debut, “Killer Solo.” Insurance investigator Jim McNamara, a recovering alcoholic and former record company insider, proves his mettle as a skilled sleuth. Jim is called in when a roadie dies in the middle of Shirley Slaughterhouse’s tour. Shirley, a Marilyn Manson-like rocker whose real name may be Irvin, has attracted his share of controversy — from his volatile lyrics to a minister who’s made the singer’s failure his personal mission. And the charismatic Shirley may not become quite the star he’d hoped — not with the back-biting band that was cobbled together at the last minute or a girlfriend who makes Courtney Love seem demure.
Hiltbrand captures the “carnival” of rock tours and the disparate personalities, from the band to the staffers to the groupies. The author keeps the plot focused and the characters well developed, although he occasionally succumbs to mystery fiction clichés.
Still, “Killer Solo” rocks. And just remember the next time you see a concert that seems so spontaneous and counter-culture: “Before you lease the sound equipment or decide which song will be your second encore, you have to get insurance,” muses Jim.
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Philadelphia Inquirer
January 28, 2004
Wednesday CITY-D EDITION
Book Review / Music industry mystery strikes right chord
Killer Solo
By David Hiltbrand
Avon. 280 pps. $6.99
Reviewed by Bill Kent
One of the more meaningful comments about writing mysteries comes from mystery author Art Bourgeau, co-owner of the Whodunit Bookstore on Chestnut Street.
"Writing mysteries is like playing the blues," Bourgeau says. "The blues is just four chords, and just about anybody can play four chords. But not everybody who can play four chords can play the blues."
I can't vouch for David Hiltbrand's musical abilities. Let's assume that a guy who has spent much of his life writing about pop culture and the music business - for The Inquirer and other publications - can bang out a chord or two.
But, when it comes to writing a good mystery, Hiltbrand's there. Killer Solo, his first, takes a long, funny, withering and ultimately sad look at the pop music business, through the cynical eyes of Jim McNamara. A former record industry talent scout and sometime bodyguard, now a freelance insurance claims adjustor and recovering alcoholic, McNamara has been around beer-soaked clubs, trash-strewn dressing rooms and rickety rock-and-roll arena stages long enough to yawn at hotel room orgies, stare down drug-dealing bikers, shoot the breeze with Don Henley (the moody Eagle makes a brief cameo), and recognize the rare bursts of artistic integrity that occasionally make everything seem worthwhile.
The dubious artist at the center of Hiltbrand's version of hell is a Marilyn Manson stand-in called Shirley Slaughterhouse, whose best friend, roadie Jake Karn, has died from falling off a scaffold long after a Portland, Maine, arena concert has ended. A loophole in the insurance policy covering Slaughterhouse's tour might help sleazy record company exec Keith Fisher extract a cash settlement from McNamara's employer. What the police call an accident seems anything but as McNamara discovers that Karn was afraid of heights, involved in dangerous drug deals, and, as "gatekeeper" to Slaughterhouse, had aroused the hatred of fans, band members and even Slaughterhouse's gruesomely Gothed girlfriend, Jacinda. Add to that some disquieting death threats aimed at Slaughterhouse, the disturbingly personal revelations about Karn and Slaughterhouse by an anonymous Internet poster, and the increasingly overzealous protests from smarmy Reverend Isaacson and his hair-trigger henchman, Deacon Jones.
A bandmember dies of a seemingly self-inflicted drug overdose. Another is nearly incinerated when he grabs a hot-wired microphone. Just as McNamara is getting comfortable with the calculatingly seductive intentions of Paula Mansmann, the band's "part matador, part pickpocket, part Geisha" publicist, he figures out that there are just too many greedy, drug-addled or merely depraved individuals who stand to profit if Slaughterhouse's tour comes to a sudden end, with Slaughterhouse either dead or conveniently incapable of entering the Philadelphia studio where he hopes to record the most important song of his career.
Along the way, Hiltbrand makes numerous journalism and music business in-jokes (perhaps in honor of the famed Chicago radio interviewer, Hiltbrand names a roadie "Legs" Turkel), and sends up brain-dead fans, clueless radio programming directors, tattoo-encrusted guitar gods with bad teeth, and craven music journalists who blithely review concerts without bothering to attend them. The ending is more bitter than sweet, with the music industry money machine grinding inexorably forward, comfortably numb to the hopes, dreams and lives it consumes.
Ah, but there's hope: Hiltbrand has left enough unresolved chords for a sequel, and I'm hoping that the wait for McNamara's next adventure won't be too long.
Bill Kent teaches novel writing at the University of Pennsylvania. His most recent mystery, "Street Hungry," is set in Philadelphia.
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