It’s almost time for SXSW, and since I moved back to Austin a year ago, I figured I’d put together a list of novels featuring musicians to read. I thought this list was just going to be a random selection from multiple years, but it turns out there are a ton of great music mysteries coming out just this year alone! Below, you’ll find seven novels exploring the intersection of creativity, celebrity, and crime, with a variety of musical genre inspirations, including pop stars, punk rockers, classical musicians, metalheads, aging folk singers, and even a tribute to grunge.
Jennifer Banash, The Rise and Fall of Ava Arcana
(Lake Union, April 1)
So, anyone familiar with the Lady Gaga/Lina Morgana murder conspiracy is going to SCREAM over this book, and regardless of your knowledge of any pop stars, The Rise and Fall of Ava Arcana stands on its own merits. Jennifer Banash goes back and forth between 2005, when the ill-fated Ava Arcana first encountered Lexi Mayhem, and the present day, in which a Rolling Stone journalist heads to California to do a cover story on the now-mega-pop star Lexi, only to find far more than she bargained for. If you like this one, or need something to read while waiting for it to come out, check out Catie Disabato’s cult classic take on celebrity, The Ghost Network.
Kyle Decker, This Rancid Mill
(PM Press, April 18)
Punk rock PI!!! Like the genre that inspired it, Decker’s This Rancid Mill embodies a punk ethos of DIY, not giving a shit, social critique, and a heavy dose of sardonic humor. This Rancid Mill is set in 1981 Los Angeles, so just keep The Decline and Fall of Western Civilization: The Punk Years in the back of your mind while reading it and you’ll have the exact era captured. In fact, perhaps the best way to describe this book is, what if Darby Crash had been murdered, and what if a PI with a Mohawk straight out of SLC Punk was hired to take on the case?
Brendan Slocumb, Symphony of Secrets
(Anchor, April 18)
Brendan Slocumb burst onto the scene with the brilliant literary mystery The Violin Conspiracy, and his follow-up is just as good. Split between the present day and 1918, the story slowly reveals how a renowned composer may have stolen all that made his music great from the autistic Black woman who was once his best friend. Like Slocumb’s debut, Symphony of Secrets uses the framework of classic detective fiction to tell a larger story of cultural appropriation and how our unequal society determines who gets to reap the benefits of talent and produce art.
John Wray, Gone to the Wolves
(FSG, May 2)
Kip, Leslie, and Kira grew up together in the swampy Florida sun, with a soundtrack of heavy metal underpinning their teenage angst, and after graduation, they head to Los Angeles, where each finds themselves changed irrevocably by the immersive metal scene. Years later, Kip and Leslie head to Europe on a mission from the FBI after they find out Kira may be associated with Neo-Nazi extremists in the murky world of Norwegian black metal.
Laura Hankin, The Daydreams
(Berkley, May 2)
Laura Hankin’s set-up makes me really wish this had been a real TV show: what if the Monkees were an early aughts Disney show? Or what if Miley Cyrus had been just one part of a whole high school rock band? The Daydreams are the stars of a children’s network show about high school kids in a band, and while child actors are at first deeply enthused to be playing their roles, a disastrous last episode leaves everyone reeling, unsure of why things unraveled so abruptly. The answer is found in toxic Hollywood culture, the pressures placed on young actors, and the ways in which we fail the most vulnerable.
Daniel Weizmann, The Last Songbird
(Melville House)
So, let’s say Joan Baez was your regular Lyft client, and you’re a budding songwriter/former private investigator, and she asked you to look into some mysteries from her past, and then was found murdered. You’d obviously avenge Joan Baez, right? I mean, who wouldn’t. Joan Baez is perfect. Also, props to Daniel Weizmann for respecting older women as artists and for his clear dedication to writing about music in an evocative and intelligent manner.
Keith Gessen, Fever House
(Random House, August 15)
What if Courtney Love and her son suddenly came into possession of a demonic severed hand that inspired violent thoughts in all who are near it? That’s the amazingly left-field set-up of Keith Gessen’s Fever House, which, in addition to the aging rocker and her son, features the viewpoints of two enforcers for a crime boss, two feds who work for a secretive government agency studying the occult, and government reports on the esoteric visions of the Angel Michael, held in captivity and slowly declining. The search for the severed hand has several folks on the musician’s trail, but she and her son are ready to get as badass as her lyrics in the 90s in order to defeat them.
