In five previous novels that stretch back from 2003's Heart Seizure
to 1998's Pest Control
, Fitzhugh has proven that he can feed off the bottom of American culture with the best of them. His latest social entertainment passing as a mystery is set in the creepy, cheesy but also strangely touching world of FM rock radio, as veteran disc jockey Rick Shannon leaves Bismarck, N.Dak.—fired in a housecleaning by a new corporate octopus owner called Clean Signal—for a job as the night man on WAOR in McRae, Miss. He arrives to find that station owner Clay Stubblefield, a former college football star of local note, has changed the original offer. WAOR's program director, Captain Jack Carter, has just disappeared, so Stubblefield offers Rick that job—at a salary to be worked out if Shannon can ever pin him down. Also, the promised spacious apartment near the studio for $300 a month turns out to be a shabby trailer home where the missing employee used to live. Shannon, with no place better to go, accepts both offers, and then decides to find out why Captain Jack (who turns up dead) hid some sexually explicit audiotapes among his vast collection. The mystery parts move along briskly, but what really gives the book its vitality is the obvious love that Shannon (and presumably Fitzhugh) have for classic rock music of virtually every persuasion. 5-city author tour. (Apr. 1)
