Starred Review Corey Lynn Fayman’s highly entertaining Gillespie Field Groove is the fifth novel in a mystery series featuring musician-turned-gumshoe Rolly Waters, but can easily stand alone for newcomers. Waters was once a guitarist in a local San Diego band on the precipice of the big time, but was derailed by a car accident and drugs and alcohol. Now he’s sober, a private investigator by day, a blues musician by night. The story opens in the late 1960s with a teenaged hippie fan befriended by a roadie at a Jimi Hendrix concert. Then it shifts to the present day with the daughter of the fan and roadie hiring Waters to locate a Stratocaster guitar her deceased father owned and claimed was once Hendrix’s. Waters’ investigation leads him to a cast of colorful characters revolving around Roger Sledge, a sleazy womanizer who manages acts and runs a recording studio. They include: Sledge’s former wife, a superstar singer-songwriter; a singer shot and killed in Sledge’s studio, and a Russian mob boss whose daughter is Sledge’s current wife. The storyline keeps readers enthralled as Waters works his case through bars, nightclubs, guitar shops and airfields (many real San Diego locales). Fayman is a keyboardist and sound tech. Music fans of a certain age (OK boomer) will enjoy random details, like the two FBI agents Waters encounters: Agents King and Goffin. Songwriters Gerry Goffin and Carole King penned some of the early ‘60s biggest hits. But you don’t have to be a music fan to enjoy the story. Fayman excels at the crisp cadences of hard-boiled detective fiction. And he often drops in humorous asides, like when Rolly senses a lawyer he’s speaking to has been hiding the truth: “Rolly felt defeated, but Gabriel seemed to have accepted defeat a long time ago. Lawyers took defeat for a living. Often a good living.” In sum, Gillespie Field Groove hits all the right notes. Music fans and general mystery readers alike will enjoy this story’s irresistible beat.

Editor's Pick The fifth book in the Rolly Waters Mystery series, Gillespie Field Groove centers on musician-turned-private-eye Rolly Waters’ efforts to locate a storied guitar. It purportedly once belonged to Jimi Hendrix himself, and Waters has been hired to find it by Lucinda Rhodes, who believes her deceased father had intended her to inherit it. The police, meanwhile, think her father was murdered. As Waters goes about his search, he finds himself, as always, mired in more trouble than he had bargained for, involving a sleazy music producer, a Russian mobster, the FBI, a long-ago shooting, and many surprising revelations. Right off the bat, the book settles into an easy familiarity, balancing crisply told scenes of the detective’s game with the world of music, showcasing Fayman’s expertise about the art, lives, and business of musicians—especially shady practices that deprive artists of credits and royalties. The case turns on such real-world concerns, but Fayman’s invented details (long-gone hit songs, forgotten artists, a conniving producer/manager) ring true, as do the ephemeral traces of them that Rolly turns up in the present. This insider’s perspective and exciting sense of lost cultural history is supplemented by a twisty plot full of strong, willful women challenging the male-dominated mores of the music industry. A cursory reader may find it a little difficult to follow the plot’s many twists and turns, especially if they haven’t been paying close attention. But for those reading with care, the book is extremely rewarding: It’s full of little clues and tantalizing bits of information that keep readers guessing, and allows them the opportunity to solve the mystery alongside Waters. Lovers of a good mystery story and music will enjoy this book which is as musically educational as it is thrilling.

Gillespie Field Groove is a thrilling mystery novel in which a man seeks to right the wrongs committed by greedy executives. Set against the backdrop of the corrupt, scandal-ridden music industry, Corey Lynn Fayman’s gripping mystery novel Gillespie Field Groove follows the exploits of a private investigator and part-time musician. Rolly Waters, the former guitarist of a successful band, now works as a private investigator. His services are requested to retrieve a missing guitar believed to have belonged to Jimi Hendrix. With only an old photograph featuring a mysterious man with the guitar to guide him, Rolly sets out to solve the mystery of the item’s whereabouts. The case exposes him to dangerous, unsavory music industry machinations. Rolly is a flawed yet moral hero. He acknowledges his former problems with drugs and alcohol, as well as unthinking transgressions against women. To redeem himself for these misdeeds, he works to be a protector of women, and lets his client, Lucinda, use him as a pretend boyfriend to ward off unwanted advances from her superior. At Rolly’s opposite is a producer, Roger—a misogynist who uses his power and status to harass and mistreat women; he dismisses the women he works with as dispensable, valuing them for their physical features alone. That these behaviors are so prominent makes him less dimensional than Rolly, though. Further, the book’s secondary characters are underdeveloped in comparison to Rolly and Roger. The story is involving in part because of its realistic atmosphere, which includes real-life San Diego restaurants, landmarks, and venues. And Gillespie Field, San Diego’s largest airport, becomes the book’s central location, with Rolly returning to its grounds multiple times as he learns more about the dangerous circumstances and people connected to the missing guitar. Music history is also infused into the prose, making its turns seem more plausible. When Rolly begins his investigation, for example, he recalls the story of how John Lennon’s guitar, which was presumed lost after a Beatles performance in England in the 1960s, was discovered in San Diego in 2015. Such thoughtful inclusions of select facts are complementary to Rolly’s continued evolution and to the sense that he is an expert in his field. Exciting, compelling, suspenseful, and reflective of the realities of the music industry and San Diego culture, Gillespie Field Groove is a thrilling mystery novel in which a man seeks to right the wrongs committed by greedy executives.