Nostalgia Kills a Left Handed

Seventeen years earlier, the brightest star in the rock firmament, stoned on heroin and hashish, drowned in a vast marble bathtub at the Grand Hotel in Rome, expiring at the very instant of orgasm. And now a top music-video jockey is mutilated and murdered in his Beverly Hills mansion. Someone wants to decimiate all surviving members of the universally adored rock group of the '60s, the Perceptions. Enter Lt. Nicky Rachmaninoff, brightest star of the L.A.P.D. homocide who is himself, as one would guess from his name, no slouch when it comes to piano playing (anything from funky blues to lapidary Bach fugues). Following various clues and hunches, while simultaneously conducting a scorching affair with his ex-wife and looking after their swinging pubescent daughter, he explores the bloody trail through boudoirs and recording studios, canyons and Mafia hangouts, eventually convering on the Grammy Awards, where everything comes to a head. Westbrook keeps the dazzling multicolored lights of the rock netherworld whirling as he hustles us along a mined tour of its murky lower depths. (April)