SOLO HAND

A week before The Soul of Country, King of Soul Lonnie Cole's duet album with Mr. Country and Western Charlie Crisp, is scheduled to sweep the American Music Awards, Lonnie gets a photo in the mail—a shot of him in bed with Crisp (passed out drunk after a party, though that's not how it looks)—together with a note naming former jazz pianist Evan Horne as the bagman for a joint $1 million blackmail demand. Evan, whose wife Sharon left him for Lonnie just about the time an accident left him with a right hand useless for carrying the melody, reluctantly agrees to gather some information while the money's being collected, but the payoff is hijacked at the drop and the police announce that Evan's typewriter wrote the blackmail demand. It's a setup, of course—and it isn't long before Evan realizes the whole scheme is a cover for an elaborate plan to skim Lonnie's royalties from his last album. This first novel peoples its savory music-industry background with such forgettable characters that it actually gets less interesting as it goes along.