Linda Barnes: Steel Guitar (USA 2015)

From the Publisher:
A Boston PI tries to help a musician friend -- and find a murderer -- in this "gripping" mystery by an Anthony Award-winning author (Publishers Weekly).

Six-foot-tall, redheaded ex-cop and Boston-based private eye Carlotta Carlyle is "the genuine article: a straightforward, funny, thoroughly American mystery heroine" (New York Post).

She may be Boston's most tenacious private detective, but by night, Carlotta Carlyle is just another cab driver hustling for an honest buck. When blues superstar Dee Willis climbs into her cab, Carlotta isn't starstruck -- she's shocked. The two women were friends in college, right up until the day Dee ran off with Carlotta's husband. Now Dee is back in town to play a sold-out concert and Carlotta is too surprised to introduce herself -- or to wonder why her old pal is asking to be dropped off in one of Boston's roughest neighborhoods.

After saving the blues diva from being ripped to shreds, Carlotta agrees to help her track down an old friend. Soon, a blackmail plot concerning stolen song lyrics is uncovered and a corpse is found in Dee's hotel room. Carlotta will have to work fast to keep her old friend from becoming yet another casualty of the blues.

Steel Guitar is the 4th book in the Carlotta Carlyle Mysteries, but you may enjoy reading the series in any order.

Linda Barnes: Steel Guitar. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. Open Road Media, ISBN: 9781504014458 (July, 2015), eBook, 1.16 MB (ca. 256 p.), $7.99.

Linda Barnes: Steel Guitar (USA 2005)

From the Publisher:
They say you meet all kinds when you're driving a hack. That's certainly the case for Boston PI Carlotta Carlyle, who gets an unexpected fare while moonlighting behind the wheel. It's singer Dee Willis, Carlotta's ex-friend and former band mate, who stole Carlotta's man before clawing her way up the charts.

Dee's made the leap from Southie's barrooms to the cover of People magazine, but now she's back in Carlotta's life, bringing with her a load of trouble. She hires Carlotta to track down a mutual friend who's fallen on hard times, but Carlotta soon finds that there's a far more menacing tune being played. Someone is blackmailing Dee, claiming she stole songwriting credits-and the money and fame that came with them. As the spotlight's glare turns as cold as the corpse that turns up in Dee's hotel room, Carlotta's past is about to catch up to her... with a vengeance.

Linda Barnes: Steel Guitar. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. St. Martin's Press, ISBN: 0312932642 (May, 2005), 272 p., $6.99.

Linda Barnes: Steel Guitar (UK 1993)

From the Publisher:
Dee Willis is a star. A blues singer whose latest album was a double-platinum seller. She's a property, surrounded by a growing coterie of execs, minders, managers and all manner of hangers-on.

But Dee and Carlotta go way back. Back to pre-electric, pre-historic college days, playing and singing together, sharing friends and laughter. Until they shared one friend too many and Dee left town with Carlotta's newly ex-husband Cal.

And now Dee is back - and in trouble. A missing mutual friend, a blackmailing letter and a dead bass player in her bed.

Private eye Carlotta finds herself investigating all their yesterdays together. And finds the old hurts are all there just waiting to be reopened.

Linda Barnes: Steel Guitar. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. Coronet, ISBN: 0340580356 (April, 1993), 257 p., £4.99.

Linda Barnes: Steel Guitar (USA 1993)

From the Publisher:
Carlotta Carlyle and Dee Willis once sang in harmony. Now Dee has a skyrocketing music career, while Carlotta drives a cab, dates a mafia scion, and looks for missing persons in Boston. But the miles they've traveled can't change what they once had, or keep it from coming back to haunt them.

MURDERING BLUES
Dee wants Carlotta to find the man who once worked magic with a guitar, but now dabbles in blackmail -- claiming to be the author of three of Dee's hit songs. When Carlottas stats searching Boston's backwaters she finds a pattern of corruption that leads back to Dee's entourage...and then to a dead body in Dee's swank hotel room. Carlotta knows that this gig isn't just about song titles, money, or even murder. Instead, this is the kind of stuff the saddest songs are made of: the past, and what happens when the innocence dies forever.

Linda Barnes: Steel Guitar. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. Dell, ISBN: 0440212685 (January, 1993), 257 p., $4.99.

Linda Barnes: Steel Guitar (USA 1991)

From the Publisher:
In three previous novels, Linda Barnes has established herself and her savvy, irresistible creation, private eye Carlotta Carlyle, as the brightest lights of contemporary crime fiction. Here, in Steel Guitar, "the most refreshing, creative female character to hit mystery fiction since Sue Grafton's Kinsey Millhone"* faces the case of a lifetime.

Dee Willis was always the star -- with a spectacular talent for singing the blues that Carlotta could never resist, not in the days when Carlotta backed her on rhythm guitar, not when they shared the same circle of friends, not even when Dee ran off with Carlotta's husband. There was always that magic music.

When Dee comes back into her life, Carlotta once again allows herself to forget the betrayal, to put aside the lingering grief of a mutual friend's suicide, to be seduced by the music...by Dee's sheer talent. The request is straightforward: help find another old friend who is suddenly claiming to have written Dee's songs. But can that really be all there is to it? Why Carlotta? Why now?

Then, when Dee's current bass player is found dead, Carlotta must confront her suspicions and investigate. What she finds won't be easy to face: the lingering ghosts of her own past with Dee...and the present reality of her own ex-husband. These were the people Carlotta loved most. Can they be involved... in murder?

*People magazine

Linda Barnes: Steel Guitar. A Carlotta Carlyle Mystery. Delacorte Press, ISBN: 0385300131 (November, 1991), 257 p., $18.50.