Take your detective mystery, replace your detective with a blues-loving DJ from Vicksburg, Mississippi, and send him out into the world to encounter a mystery made up of old blues players, a murder or two, a framing, a legendary lost tape reel, a conspiracy, loose women and fast rock tunes, and you have this author's version of a whodunnit.

As with all mysteries, the devil is in the details - though here he waited for a young black blues player down at the crossroads - and if you miss a name, or confuse a relation, it's quite easy to find yourself in the middle of a dozen potential killers, several dozen clues, and nowhere to turn but back a page and re-read the section. Truly, it's a complex weave and a nod to Bill Fitzhugh's powers of creation - but you'd better be on your toes.

The author also has a fine knack of recreating the inner emotions of musicians and what they must go through in order to create. He's done his homework and mixes fact with fancy - a style that rarely works - and as such has been able to create wizened, hardened and truly believable blues characters born of another time and forced to confront a world that hasn't been particularly kind.

If you like character-driven, plot-driven stories peppered with rock music and blues, take a drive through these pages.