Women's Fiction, Women Detectives - Fiction

Killer Riff

Name: Killer Riff
Author: Sheryl J. Anderson
ISBN: 9780312351410

by Anderson, Sheryl J.

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Overview

Glossy mag advice columnist Molly Forrester has been working her tail off to get recognized as an investigative journalist and has even solved a few murders along the way, but none of that matters to her editor, who’s more than happy to keep Molly tied down to her Dear Abby roots.

Thankfully, though, her publisher has taken notice and has a lot more faith: Molly’s been promoted, and her first assignment as a full-time feature writer should be a cinch. It’s a profile of Russell Elliott, the legendary rock manager/producer who just died of an accidental overdose. The rock ’n roll world is pretty accustomed to seeing its brightest stars burn out early, and jaded as it sounds, no one is shocked by Elliot’s death—-no one except his daughter, that is, who is convinced that it was no accident.

All Molly has to do to keep her new job, pump up newsstand sales, and win back reluctant beau NYPD homicide detective Kyle Edwards is give Elliot a once-over like a devoted fan, without looking too deeply at anything that smacks of murder, like his infamous family, his infighting protégés, or the rumor about his long-lost bootleg tapes. What could be easier for Zeitgeist magazine’s newest star? Almost anything.

Smart, sexy, and suspenseful, Killer Riff takes readers on a thrilling tour of New York’s high-stakes music industry and makes for a stylishly entertaining addition to Sheryl J. Anderson’s jazzy Molly Forrester series.

About the Author, Sheryl J. Anderson

Sheryl J. Anderson is a television producer, a novelist, and a writing teacher. She lives with her family in Los Angeles, California.

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly

Glamorous to outsiders, the high-powered music business can exact a fatally high price for fame, as Molly Forrester discovers when she turns investigative reporter in Anderson's entertaining fourth mystery (after 2006's Killer Deal) to feature the popular advice columnist for Zeitgeist, a fashionable Manhattan magazine. Molly seizes the chance to profile music industry giant Russell Elliott, who's recently died of what's been ruled an accidental drug overdose. As Molly begins to interview Elliott's complex family, which includes an assortment of ex-wives, and learns of the legal and personal tangles of the tortured genius, she suspects his demise was no accident. Meanwhile, she struggles to keep her job and to rekindle her romance with handsome NYPD homicide detective Kyle Edwards. Anderson's breezy style-a mix of wit and trendy references-at times borders on the silly, but chick lit fans, not to mention Sex in the City buffs, will find much to like. (Dec.)

School Library Journal

Kirkus Reviews

An advice columnist's long-awaited promotion to the features section begins with an article about a late rock icon's possibly murderous family. Tired of addressing the romantic woes of readers who couldn't spell the name of her publication if it weren't on the masthead, Zeitgeist magazine's Molly Forrester (Killer Cocktail, 2005, etc.) finally gets her big break. Bucking her editor, associate publisher Henry Kwon assigns her to write on Olivia Elliott, whose father, rock-'n'-roll producer Russell Elliott, died of an accidental overdose three weeks before. It's a meaty subject. In the late 1980s, Russell had managed Subject to Change Without Notice, a chart-busting band in the grunge vanguard. Since the death of lead singer Micah Crowley, the Elliotts and the Crowleys-including Micah's wife Claire, their son Adam, their out-of-wedlock son Jordan and Bonnie Carson, Jordan's mother-have continued to live in merged dysfunction in adjoining duplexes. Naturally, Molly zeroes in on the angle most likely to raise her editor's hackles and destroy her fragile reconciliation with Kyle Edwards, who called it quits over her incessant sleuthing. Thank goodness she has best friends Tricia and Cassady to help her party with the Crowley boys, now rockers in their own right, as she gets her face smeared all over the tabloids in the process. Anderson's overplotted fourth is not for readers who expect the solution to make sense. Agent: Andrew Zack/The Zack Company