'Death by Didgeridoo' by Barbara Venkataramann

Spike from 'The Screaming Zombies' is dead.  He was found in the studio of his music store of the same name by one of his students, Adam, who is being charged for his murder.

But are the police right in doing this?  

Jamie Quinn - a lawyer, and Adam's cousin - thinks they're wrong.  The main reason is that Adam couldn't possibly have done it.  Just because he was at the scene of the crime saying he was wrong and he had done it, didn't necessarily mean it was the murder he was talking about. 

Jamie's cousin is Autistic and he's a talented musician who loved Spike; they were the best of friends and Jamie knew this.  She just has to prove this the police before it went to court.

So, she hires a private detective:  Duke Broussard.  And just as his name sounds, he's from The South.  He's a charmingly sweet, womanising kinda man, but he also knows how to get the right kind of information about Spike and the rest of the band he played with - even if none of them got along offstage, and Spike himself wasn't very well-like by anyone around him.

Duke digs up a lot of things about Spike that could get him harmed or killed by just about anyone in the band - along with their spouses - but he is confident that Adam is the least of their worries, and he can prove that too; but can they find the murderer in time and catch them before this whole thing goes to court and Jamie's cousin is charged for a crime he didn't commit?

This is the first of the series of books written by Barbara Venkataramann.  Even though it's a good, old love-triangle murder, with all the usual twists and turns, those twists and turns weren't in the places I expected them to be; and this is a good thing.

I also didn't know something about America:  there are two Hollywood's.  There's the one we all know well on the west coast in L.A.  And there's one in Miami, just north of Miami Beach where Hollywood has built an entire suburb to the movie industry so movies can be made on the east coast as well!  This is something I had to Google; it totally threw me a total curve ball in the first three chapters... otherwise, after I knew this, it was fine.  I jumped straight in and listened to the rest of the book!  I'd love to read more books along this line.  

However, the characters do need more fleshing out.  I'd love to know more about their backgrounds, their lives, what they look like more, what their houses look like and family histories better.  But this, I trust, will be filled out more as the series goes on.  Well worth a read or a listen to on audio-book through Audible.  Until my next post, happy reading!