Sweet Man Is Gone Book

Blues-singer Maxx Maxwell is smart, talented, and gorgeous--at least since she had her nose fixed, went blonde, and bought a push-up bra. So what if she’s living in a scruffy apartment in Hackensack, New Jersey, and the waitress job she’s taken to make ends meet is driving her crazy? Her band, Maxximum Blues, is really taking off, thanks to the talents of guitarist Jimmy Nashville, a heartbreakingly handsome guy whose life is complicated by an assortment of girlfriends.

But then Jimmy plunges to his death from the window of his ninth-floor apartment. His death intensifies tensions already simmering in the band, and Maxx fears her dream of making it as a singer might just as well be dead too. Besides, she has to admit that, though she was trying to resist his charm, she was as smitten with Jimmy as were the other women in his life.

When Jimmy’s death is ruled suicide, Maxx resolves to go sleuthing on her own.

Cozy but cool, Sweet Man Is Gone features a quirky cast of characters that include a skeptical cop and an assortment of eccentric musicians. Maxx’s quest, played out against a backdrop of blues and Manhattan bar bands, uncovers a surprising number of people who had reason to kill Jimmy, and it takes her deep into Jimmy’s mysterious past.

The plot, with its surprising and dramatic climax, will keep readers guessing until the last few pages.

Kirkus Reviews

A blues singer turns detective when her guitarist's death is ruled a suicide. After one bad relationship with a guitar man, Maxx Maxwell has kept her distance from sexy, talented Jimmy Nashville. But when she arrives at his upper Manhattan apartment to pick him up for a gig, she's stunned to learn that his body has just been discovered in the alley outside. Unable to believe Jimmy killed himself, Maxx keeps calling Stallings, the soon-to-be-retired cop in charge of the case, with contrary evidence. She discovers a tape and some handwritten music in Jimmy's apartment that lead to a recently deceased country singer who led a life just made for sad country songs. When Maxx discovers Jimmy's latest girlfriend, wrist slashed, in her tub, she's even more convinced that a killer is loose and keeps bombarding an uninterested Stallings with theories. Meanwhile, her band is going through problems of its own. After temporarily taking on a guitarist she'd once fired, Maxx begins to wonder if he murdered Jimmy. A mysterious stranger Jimmy had words with at their rehearsal studio brings the case to a boil worthy of a New York summer. Maxx will need all her considerable street smarts and every lucky break she can catch before the puzzle is finally solved. Maxx's debut has a real feel for the bar-music scene and a gutsy, believable sleuth.