I have been hooked on Deb Grabien’s novels since I had the great good fortune to read the first of her Haunted Ballads series. What pulled me in right from the beginning was not only the characters and settings, but also the amount of research in each of these books. Here was a writer who could bring the past, with its rich musical and social history, right up to the doorstep of the present, and also into the scary and popular field of ghost stories.

So when I got wind that Grabien was about to launch a new series involving both music and mystery, before ever reading an advance review copy of Rock and Roll Never Forgets, I was already on board, both as a reader and bookseller. Those two distinctions – reader and bookseller – are important in my overview of this most entertaining and interest-grabbing series. As a reader I was completely taken from the opening sentence: “Good Evening, Wembley!” And boom, there I was in a front-row seat at rock and roll institution Blacklight’s closing show in London.

​Grabien doesn’t miss a beat before you are with Blacklight in NY’s Madison Square Garden. In the opening chapters of Rock and Roll Never Forgets, the reader is introduced to Kinkaid and he, in turn, introduces us to the other four members of the band, all aging rockers, whose commitment to their music is only equaled by their commitment to each other. And deeply imbedded in each of these books is the author’s commitment to her readers.