Steel Guitar

Rating:
Summary: Carlotta confronts her past
Review: Carlotta Carlyle gets a surprise customer in her taxi one night. It's Dee Willis, a famous singer, who used to be Carlotta's best friend until she stole Carlotta's husband from her. Dee now needs Carlotta's help in finding Davey, a mutual friend of theirs. Davey is accusing Dee of stealing songs which he wrote and passing them off as her own. Carlotta's investigation brings her in contact with several old friends, including her ex-husband. As usual, she is conflicted about her love life, which in this book includes three different men. As in her other books, Linda Barnes writes an interesting tale with a good plot and well-defined characters.

Rating:
Summary: Not the best
Review: I'm not wild about Carlotta's blues hobby -- it seems too forced -- so an entire book centered around it wasn't exactly a page-turner. Karen Kijewski did the "old friend is a big-time musician with a problem" better in the Kat Colorado series.

I also found the mystery, and the culprit, to be vague. It's a good series, but this definitely wasn't one of the better installments.

Rating:
Summary: Deserves a Reprint!
Review: If you can find this book, grab it. Number four in the Carlotta Carlyle mystery series, it offers a great deal of interesting background into Carlotta's life, none of which has been discussed in any depth in the previous three books.

The plot centers around an old friend/enemy, Dee Willis, now a blues/rock superstar. In Boston for a major gig, Dee looks up her old pal Carlotta, not for old times' sake, but to help find a missing mutual friend from long ago, a fine blues guitarist who fell into a life of drugs and booze. There's a serious reason why Dee wants Carlotta to find Davey--but doing so unlocks emotions for Carlotta that she'd rather keep buried. Emotions due to the fact that, way back when she and Dee were in the same band, Dee stole Carlotta's husband, bass guitarist Cal.

Carlotta agrees to find Davey, but in doing so, she has to slog through old business and old feelings--and confront Cal, something she has never been able to do since he left her. A good mystery, a good story, and a real key into Carlotta. I don't know why it's out of print!