cover image Bad Girl Blues: An Andy Derain Novel

Bad Girl Blues: An Andy Derain Novel

Rex Dancer. Simon & Schuster, $20 (304pp) ISBN 978-0-671-88007-1

Writing as Dancer, a Chicago Tribune columnist who covers Washington society events sinks his latest mystery with needless name-dropping, a surfeit of incidental detail and too many precious characters. Andy Derain, a handsome, ruggedly dissolute photographer, flees fame in New York to reclaim his roots in New Orleans. His fashion-model lover, Candy, who occasionally escapes from her billionaire husband to slum with Andy, is with him in his French Quarter apartment when a male prostitute is knifed to death under the window. Andy, in the buff, chases the killer while Candy runs off, fearful of publicity. Andy's address is found in the dead boy's pocket. A second man dies, and Andy begins to wonder whether Candy's powerful husband is involved. Everyone Andy encounters is colorful, witty or mysterious--and unbelievable. Packed with pointless asides on photography and catty put-downs of tourists, Dancer offers a dull mystery in trendy, bodice-ripper prose. BOMC and QPB alternate. (June)