In Corey Lynn Fayman’s detective mystery, GILLESPIE FIELD GROOVE, axe master and private detective Rolly Waters plucks a lifetime of connections within San Diego’s music scene to track down a Stratocaster guitar believed owned by rock legend Jimi Hendrix. In the process, he cracks a cold-case murder and uncovers a shell game that aims to redress decades of wrongdoing by power-mad, sexist men. The opening flashback of groggy recollections from a man about to die from a blow to the head shows the author’s mastery of the genre. From then on, hint by hint, readers piece together the man’s identity, a key to solving the overall mystery.
Skillfully crafted protagonist Waters is a macho detective with a sensitive soul on a mission for redemption from his drinking and drugging, rock musician heyday. The death of his bandmate Matt, killed in a car crash when Rolly was driving drunk, weighs heavy as he fights his inner demons and solves the case. But this artful protagonist rings off-key when the author seeks to contemporize the book as Waters rants about the evils of sexism and honor of the #MeToo movement. Characters are carefully crafted like idealistic, former rock star Ruby Dean and Rob Norwood, an old-school guitar appraiser struggling to adapt to the computer age. A few in the book, like scuzzy music exec Roger Sledge and the terse, menacing Russian thug Sergei, fall into genre tropes.
The complex plot’s twists and turns are well-paced. The author’s prose is tight and gripping, except when he lapses into genre cliches, as in this description of the wannabe rock star Svetlana: “a blond glam doll in stiletto heels and oversized sunglasses.” Her Uncle Dmitri, the aging, ruthless gangster and blues guitar connoisseur who has a blind spot for his talentless niece, is a treat for readers. San Diego’s music scene provides a gritty backdrop for this professionally presented and well-edited book. It’s only when Fayman riffs off “ripped from the headlines” themes that his fine talent slips.
Corey Lynn Fayman’s GILLESPIE FIELD GROOVE is an absorbing mystery that thrills when its skilled author stays faithful to the detective genre’s charms and lets gumshoe Rolly Waters crack the case without waxing “woke.”
~Robin L Harvey for IndieReader