Dark Side of the Morgue – Raymond Benson

©2009 Leisure Books, New York

Raymond Benson is probably best known for picking up the James Bond character and penning six novels featuring 007. Dark Side of the Morgue is the second of his Spike Berenger Rock ‘n’ Roll Hits. I found it to be an excellent introduction to the author, the character, and the Rockin’ Security team.

Berenger is a fan of the limited music scene known as Chicagoprog (note: there is no real progressive music scene in Chicago). Then he’s hired by the only truly successful artist to investigate the rash of murders that is picking off the movement’s founding artists. Police are reluctant to admit a connection between the first three incidents that claims the lives of five of the musicians, but other musicians with connections to the Loop and its spin-off bands, Windy City Engine and Red Skyez, are living in fear

of a groupie ghost who is picking them off one and two at a time.

Berenger has to learn of

drug-related events over thirty years old, and break a code of silence that has been strictly kept since those days, in order to find and stop the killer before she strikes again.

Dark Side of the Morgue is a great choice for your reading pleasure. You’ll visit the sometimes seamy, sometimes glitzy world of progressive rock, waltz down memory lane with the continual music references that are included, but not limited to, chapter titles (along with preferred performers noted), and get to solve the case with Berenger and his sexy partner, Suzanne Prescott, all while enjoying a well-written, fast-paced mystery. Get ready for well-developed characters and moving plot-lines, with all the twists and revelations of any good mystery novel.

Four out of five reading glasses!

—Benjamin Potter, April 20, 2009