Series:

Vinyl Detective

1 primary work • 4 total works

Book 5

Cover of Low Action (Vinyl Detective 5)
The Vinyl Detective goes punk in his fifth hilarious adventure. "Like an old 45rpm record, this book crackles with brilliance." David Quantick on Written in Dead Wax.

Semi-retired god of rock guitar and local poseur Erik Make Loud has got himself a new girlfriend. Helene Hilditch - formerly known as Howlin' Hellbitch - of all-girl punk outfit Blue Tits is a mean guitarist, someone is trying to kill her.

With a rare pressing of the Blue Tits' first album to find, the Vinyl Detective and Nevada are called in to help. But this time the question is who isn't a suspect. With a long list of enemies, the people who could want Helene dead includes her ex-bandmates, their former producer turned record label mogul, the TV presenter that Helene got fired-even their old roadie could be in on it. As the killer's attempts on Helene's life get more and more ambitious the Vinyl Detective and Nevada are in a race against time to find the killer, before it's too late.

Cover of The Run-Out Groove

The Run-Out Groove

by Andrew Cartmel

Published 9 May 2017
When a mint copy of the final album by Valerian England's great lost rock band of the 1960s surfaces in a charity shop, all hell breaks loose. Finding this record triggers a chain of events culminating in our hero learning the true fate of the singer Valerian, who died under equivocal circumstances just after - or was it just before? - the abduction of her two-year-old son.

Cover of Written in Dead Wax

Written in Dead Wax

by Andrew Cartmel

Published 10 May 2016
He is a record collector - a connoisseur of vinyl, hunting out rare and elusive LPs. His business card describes him as the "Vinyl Detective" and some people take this more literally than others. Like the beautiful, mysterious woman who wants to pay him a large sum of money to find a priceless lost recording on behalf of an extremely wealthy, yet shadowy, client. So begins a painful and dangerous odyssey in search of the rarest jazz record of them all...

Cover of The Vinyl Detective - Underscore

The Vinyl Detective plunges into the world of Italian movie soundtrack music in his eighth adventure that is sure to delight those who love whimsical British cosy crime. Expect laughs, LPs, cats and the return of fan favourites, Nevada, Tinkler, Stinky Stanmer and more.

Some of the greatest (and grooviest) music ever committed to vinyl has come out of Italy.

And some of the greatest music to come out of Italy is the rich diversity of soundtracks composed for the indigenous film industry - particularly for gruesome thrillers known as 'gialli'. The maestros who composed for these include Ennio Morricone, Piero Piccioni, Armand Trovajoli...

And Valerius Passeri.

He was one of the finest composers of this genre and his original LPs from his 1960s heyday fetch a fortune from collectors.

No one disputes that Passeri was a genius...

The argument is whether or not he was a murderer.

Passeri's mistress was killed in London in the 1960s while he was here on location for a film shoot. There was never enough hard evidence to lead to a prosecution but the stink of scandal has never gone away.

Passeri's granddaughter Chloe has come to England to hire the Vinyl Detective. She wants him to negotiate for a collection of her father's LPs. The mastertapes of the albums have been destroyed and she needs immaculate vinyl copies to provide the source for a series of reissues - Chloe's mission is to preserve her grandfather's heritage. And also, it transpires, to clear his name.

So it turns out that the Vinyl Detective's real job will be to find out who actually committed a murder - over half a century ago, in Swinging London.

But the real killer is not enchanted with the notion of being exposed. And, having killed once before, they see no problem in doing so again.