St. Barts Breakdown

January 15, 2008
Rock music journalist Mick Sever ("Jamaica Blue") goes to St. Bart to interview big-time music producer Danny Murtz but finds that something is very wrong with Murtz and his entourage. Plenty of action in short chapters keeps this one moving.

Copyright 2008 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 24, 2007
In Bruns’s mildly diverting fourth mystery to feature rock journalist Mick Sever (after 2006’s South Beach Shakedown
), Sever flies to a Caribbean island known as a haven for the rich and famous to interview Danny Murtz, a highly successful rock music producer who in his day turned out hit singles employing a unique orchestral sound. (Murtz will remind many of the real-life Phil Spector.) Murtz’s lawyer and all-around fixer insists Murtz proceed with the interview while the lawyer tries to cover up the most recent death of a young woman with whom the producer was involved. Murtz, whose always erratic behavior has become dangerously more so, decides he can take care of his own problems, including a nosy journalist. Full of one-dimensional characters and implausible situations, this slight novel offers no insight into the world of rock from either the point-of-view of a journalist or a producer.

November 15, 2007
Take a Phil Spectorlike pop-music producer. Make him a near billionaire by virtue of his clever ability to purloin lyrics and tunes from others in the business. Replace his weird hairdos with recreational hankerings on the order of single-malt scotches, the usual assortment of back-alley pharmaceuticals, and a bad habit of murdering wannabe female crooners. Then stir him into an island in which no criminal homicide has ever been committedand never will be committedbecausethe tourist economy would suffer. Add a Galahad in the way of a celebrity journalist assigned to interview the producer. Make the last starlet-victim telephone the scribbler just before she goes over the balcony. And you have the recipe for a Caribbean E-thrillerwith a ring tone amazingly like the near-Caribbean thrillers of Tim Dorsey and Tom Corcoran.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)