Book Review: Rock and Roll Homicide by R.J. McDonnell

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New author for me and I think I downloaded it on a whim in April 2012 and it has been sitting in my TBR pile ever since, but we got there in the end and it was a good read.

Jason Duffy is an Ex rocker, Ex social needs councillor and now a full time private investigator.  His father James is a 30 year veteran of the San Diego Police Department and his son is a bit of a disappointment to him as he should have been a cop too instead of messing about as a failed musician, councillor and now the ultimate slap in the face to any cop, a son who wants to be a 'private dick' (My words, not the authors or the fathers).

An up and coming group are in the studio laying down the final tracks to their third CD, the one that everyone says is going to turn them from a support band to the headline act.

The group front man and co writer of many of the songs, and a perfectionist calls a break and puts on his noise cancelling headphones, a present from his wife..........

It gets messy after that and while sitting in his office Jason Duffy's PA shows in a new client, Chelsea Tucker, wife of the dead rocker who stands to inherit $5 million from a recently taken out life policy, she needs a PI as she thinks the police are going to arrest her for the murder of her husband and as Jason finds out during he course of his investigations, they had had a very public and acrimonious argument a few days before the incident.

It turns out though that Terry Tucker, being a perfectionist and as is the way things are with those folk, made lots of people unhappy in his willingness to walk over those who did not come up to his high standards of performance and so not all of the band or the hangers on or roadies gave him their undying loyalty.  It also turns out that while a superlative musician he also had a business head on him too and there was the little matter of him publicly embarrassing his wife's father, a successful and powerful business man, over a deal that Chelsea's father was trying to get them involved in.  

They had recently signed to a 'new' record company with the proceeds of the new CD due to go through the stratosphere based on the sales volume of the first two releases but the 'new' record company who it turns out may have links to the Russian Maffia, were not to clever at the kind of contract that Terry Tucker was looking for and he had built in a get out clause which would have meant the record company losing a rock venue sized stadium full of money...

So young Donovan has a lot of suspects but no hard evidence and finds that the local cops have already determined who the killer is, even after he tells them they may be wrong and finds some evidence to support this, including the fact that the main roadie /soundman was in the Army and was an expert in explosives.....

BTW, just a personal aside but I really did hate the name GI Jo-JO  absolutely hated it

But, for the rest of the story it was fairly fast paced and moved along constantly with plenty of twists and turns although I did think at a couple of points, especially with the caricatured Russian's oh, and the involvement of the SDPD Irish 'Mafia' it was a bit passe' even for a book written in 2008/9 but never the less a  passable days reading.

There were a couple of Kindle formatting errors and spelling errors, but only a couple, however they do tend to distract you, which is never a good thing if you want to entice the reader back to your books. 

And why is that there is a table of contents AT THE REAR OF THE BOOK and why bother with this anyway if your chapters are going to be called Chapter 1 through 31.  I suppose there are differing views to my own, in fact I know there is, but if you are going to have a ToC put it at the front of the book and to my mind use it if you are going to name your chapters, but I really don't see the point taking up a page or two just with a load of chapter numbers 

Editing for Kindle: 3 out of 5
Reading Enjoyment: 4 out of 5
Plot: 5 out of 5
Overall Rating: 4 out of 5
Chapters: 31
Page length: 304 apparently but not evident on my kindle or iPad app - just % read