Nick Carbonne is solid, good-looking, and disarmingly hip. The former front man for the thrash band Plague Dogs, he has found his space as a producer of such cutting-edge groups as O. J.'s Knife. He's also found his wife and his best buddy snuggled naked together in a hot tub. Dead. To determine what happened, he scours the sleaze off the denizens of southern California's music industry in this acerbic look at Orange County, the rock industry, and the unhealthy business of murder.

From Publishers Weekly
Familiarity with Ferrigno's three previous novels (Dead Man's Dance, etc.) won't breed contempt for his fourth, which is as fast and nasty as a cobra strike. It does raise the question, however, of why this talented author doesn't vary his formula. Again, Ferrigno presents an ominous California noir-scape teeming with quirky sadistic villains, dangerous slinky babes and a hip but good-hearted hero caught in their violent wake. Former rock star Nick Carbonne becomes the cops' chief suspect in the shooting death of his wife and his old band buddy, Perry. Ferrigno lavishes his liveliest prose, however, on Alison, Perry's sexy Texas girlfriend, who keeps Nick in a state of erotic expectation as the two of them attempt to solve the murders. Alison and Perry's specialty was making and selling audiotapes of dirty phone calls that Alison placed to strangers?a relatively harmless and quite lucrative pursuit, until the couple inadvertently taped the murder of one of their regular "clients." As they track the killer, Nick and Alison win the shaky support of a local cop. They also acquire more insidious help: the protection of the "Blue Angel," an ice-blooded killer who's after the same quarry, if for different reasons. Ferrigno spices this fruity slice of West Coast life with acerbic takes on aging rockers and motorcycle gangsters, post-punk bar and party people, lowlife agents, videophiles and perverts. He tells a nimble mystery, nostalgically propelled by sex, drugs, rock-and-roll?and more than one echo of his earlier work. Film rights sold to Twentieth Century Fox. Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
In Ferrigno's L.A. world of has-beens and wannabes, there is little privacy or shame. Nick, a former rock star looking for work, and aspiring actress Allison, the girlfriend of Nick's old pal Perry, return from networking at a record party to find Perry and Nick's wife, Sharon, naked and dead by the hot tub. Phone sex tapes performed by Allison and produced by Perry seem an inadequate motive for the crime, except for the cassette that may have picked up a murder too. So vengeful Nick, with Allison at his side, is on the chase, intersecting with the book's two most memorable characters: Detective Calvin Thorpe, a charmer who plays whatever role works, and hit man Blue Angel, a washed-out navy pilot with his own fighter jets who is as handsome as he is lethal. Ferrigno (Dead Man's Dance, LJ 5/1/95) provides a convoluted plot laced with sex and drugs and loaded with violent action, in which?in its own way?justice is served. Good, hard-boiled entertainment perfectly tailored for the big screen, with film rights already sold.?Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The New York Times Book Review, Marilyn Stasio
With his taste for macabre acts of violence and his sense of the absurd, it's no wonder that Robert Ferrigno sets his lurid crime novels in southern California.

From Booklist
Nick Carbonne has been working on the outskirts of the music industry as an independent producer for 17 years, ever since his punk band's first single went gold, and the group promptly self-destructed while on tour. When his former bandmate, Perry, along with his sexy new girlfriend, Alison, show up unexpectedly, Nick begins to brood about lost opportunities. Then Nick and Alison return home from a record-release party to discover the dead bodies of Nick's wife and Perry floating in the hot tub. Alternately comforted and cross-examined by a hulking homicide detective, Nick and Alison attempt to discover the connection between the murders and Perry's lucrative black-market dealings in phone-sex tapes, many of which feature Alison in the role of chatty seductress. Their investigation brings them into contact with a reclusive, pajama-clad techno-geek, a sadistic hit man, and a brainy drug-designer. L.A. is the perfect setting for this slick, violent thriller, which weds Nick's world-weary cynicism to the decadence of the music business and its warped players. Packed with quirky, memorable secondary characters and sardonic, witty dialogue, Ferrigno's (The Horse Latitudes, 1990) rock-'n'-roll noir has already been optioned by Twentieth-Century Fox. Joanne Wilkinson

From Kirkus Reviews
Ever since The Horse Latitudes (1990), Ferrigno's been floundering in a deepening trough. His fourth suspenser (after Dead Man's Dance, 1995) is his most routine yet. A few days after one-time rocker Nick Carbonne and his lawyer wife Sharon open their California home to Perry Estridge, Nick's long-ago colleague in the Plague Dogs, Nick runs his Porsche into a ditch, nearly killing both Perry's girlfriend Alison and himself. The two manage to scramble out of the submerged car, but things haven't gone so well on the home front: Perry's been shot very much to death in Nick's hot tub, with Sharon lying dead not far away. Sgt. Calvin Thorpe, of the Rancho Verdes PD, thinks Perry and Sharon were sharing more than a hot tub, and it isn't long before he discovers that Sharon was seeing a divorce lawyer (a surprise to Nick). Meanwhile, though, Ferrigno has started in on what's meant to be the real action. First, there's the news that Alison, who liked to phone people at random and talk dirty for audiotapes she later peddled around Hollywood, got a tiger by the tail the night of the murder: She's listening as someone she's phoned gets beaten to death. Then there's the Blue Angel, a freelance scavenger/avenger on the trail of a $9 million marker owed by Evil Dead gangleader Ben Telaris and his baseball-batwielding buddies. Sparks will surely fly, you think, when the Angel's path crosses Nick's and Alison's. Don't be so sure. Despite some lovely riffs on hurting people very much, and several more ingenious murders and betrayals, the earth doesn't move, and you might as well be idling in the driveway, fully packed and raring to go, by the time Ferrigno delivers his soggy climactic twist. Line by line, Ferrigno writes one mean thriller. It's the bigger units--characters, relationships, plot--that keep this familiar tale from sounding as fresh as the prose. (Film rights to Twentieth Century-Fox) -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Review
Critics find Robert Ferrigno's fiction "heart-pounding" (Chicago Tribune), "fast-paced and subtly witty" (Seattle Times), "darkly comic" (The New York Times), and "sexy and sadistic" (The New Yorker).

Review
Critics find Robert Ferrigno's fiction "heart-pounding" (Chicago Tribune), "fast-paced and subtly witty" (Seattle Times), "darkly comic" (The New York Times), and "sexy and sadistic" (The New Yorker).

FROM THE PUBLISHER

A single-hit ex-rock star, Nick Carbonne has settled into a comfortable married life, a home in a scruffy-but-chic section of southern California, and regular work producing bands whose members dimly recall hearing his gold record in sixth grade. When an old friend and former fellow band member shows up unannounced with his hot girlfriend, Alison, old memories, and older jealousies, are stirred. But Nick in no way anticipates how his life will be shaken when he returns home with Alison one evening to find his wife and Alison's boyfriend naked and oh-so-dead - murdered - their bodies floating in the hot tub.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Familiarity with Ferrigno's three previous novels (Dead Man's Dance, etc.) won't breed contempt for his fourth, which is as fast and nasty as a cobra strike. It does raise the question, however, of why this talented author doesn't vary his formula. Again, Ferrigno presents an ominous California noir-scape teeming with quirky sadistic villains, dangerous slinky babes and a hip but good-hearted hero caught in their violent wake. Former rock star Nick Carbonne becomes the cops' chief suspect in the shooting death of his wife and his old band buddy, Perry. Ferrigno lavishes his liveliest prose, however, on Alison, Perry's sexy Texas girlfriend, who keeps Nick in a state of erotic expectation as the two of them attempt to solve the murders. Alison and Perry's specialty was making and selling audiotapes of dirty phone calls that Alison placed to strangersa relatively harmless and quite lucrative pursuit, until the couple inadvertently taped the murder of one of their regular "clients." As they track the killer, Nick and Alison win the shaky support of a local cop. They also acquire more insidious help: the protection of the "Blue Angel," an ice-blooded killer who's after the same quarry, if for different reasons. Ferrigno spices this fruity slice of West Coast life with acerbic takes on aging rockers and motorcycle gangsters, post-punk bar and party people, lowlife agents, videophiles and perverts. He tells a nimble mystery, nostalgically propelled by sex, drugs, rock-and-rolland more than one echo of his earlier work. Film rights sold to Twentieth Century Fox. (Aug.)

Library Journal

In Ferrigno's L.A. world of has-beens and wannabes, there is little privacy or shame. Nick, a former rock star looking for work, and aspiring actress Allison, the girlfriend of Nick's old pal Perry, return from networking at a record party to find Perry and Nick's wife, Sharon, naked and dead by the hot tub. Phone sex tapes performed by Allison and produced by Perry seem an inadequate motive for the crime, except for the cassette that may have picked up a murder too. So vengeful Nick, with Allison at his side, is on the chase, intersecting with the book's two most memorable characters: Detective Calvin Thorpe, a charmer who plays whatever role works, and hit man Blue Angel, a washed-out navy pilot with his own fighter jets who is as handsome as he is lethal. Ferrigno (Dead Man's Dance, LJ 5/1/95) provides a convoluted plot laced with sex and drugs and loaded with violent action, in whichin its own wayjustice is served. Good, hard-boiled entertainment perfectly tailored for the big screen, with film rights already sold.Michele Leber, Fairfax Cty. P.L., Va.

Kirkus Reviews

Ever since The Horse Latitudes (1990), Ferrigno's been floundering in a deepening trough. His fourth suspenser (after Dead Man's Dance, 1995) is his most routine yet.

A few days after one-time rocker Nick Carbonne and his lawyer wife Sharon open their California home to Perry Estridge, Nick's long-ago colleague in the Plague Dogs, Nick runs his Porsche into a ditch, nearly killing both Perry's girlfriend Alison and himself. The two manage to scramble out of the submerged car, but things haven't gone so well on the home front: Perry's been shot very much to death in Nick's hot tub, with Sharon lying dead not far away. Sgt. Calvin Thorpe, of the Rancho Verdes PD, thinks Perry and Sharon were sharing more than a hot tub, and it isn't long before he discovers that Sharon was seeing a divorce lawyer (a surprise to Nick). Meanwhile, though, Ferrigno has started in on what's meant to be the real action. First, there's the news that Alison, who liked to phone people at random and talk dirty for audiotapes she later peddled around Hollywood, got a tiger by the tail the night of the murder: She's listening as someone she's phoned gets beaten to death. Then there's the Blue Angel, a freelance scavenger/avenger on the trail of a $9 million marker owed by Evil Dead gangleader Ben Telaris and his baseball-batwielding buddies. Sparks will surely fly, you think, when the Angel's path crosses Nick's and Alison's. Don't be so sure. Despite some lovely riffs on hurting people very much, and several more ingenious murders and betrayals, the earth doesn't move, and you might as well be idling in the driveway, fully packed and raring to go, by the time Ferrigno delivers his soggy climactic twist.

Line by line, Ferrigno writes one mean thriller. It's the bigger units—characters, relationships, plot—that keep this familiar tale from sounding as fresh as the prose.