A-List by D.P. Lyle / Review by G. Robert Frazier
A-List
By D.P. Lyle
Oceanview Publishing
$26.95
ISBN 978-1608092703
Publication Date: December 12, 2017
Book of the Day
When A-list actor Kirk Ford wakes up next to a deceased woman in a New Orleans hotel, his arrest for her murder threatens to derail his career and ruin a multi-million dollar Hollywood film series. Enter Jake Longly and a team of investigators determined to find the truth behind the murder.
A-List, written by cardiologist and forensics expert D.P. Lyle, is billed as a thriller, but more accurately is an old-school whodunit mystery. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. Longly and company – his father, Ryan, girlfriend and fellow investigator Nicole Jamison, and computer expert/muscle Tommy Jeffers, aka Pancake – are more than up to the challenge, whether it comes from the begrudging police detective in charge Troy Doucet to the less-than-friendly assistance of the local mafia don, Tony Guidry, whose niece was the victim.
After a tox screen by the medical examiner reveals both Kirk and the victim had traces of the date rape drug Ketamine in their systems, the clues point to a possible third party involved in the murder whose intent was to frame Kirk for the crime. Jake and Nicole spearhead a line of questioning of potential witnesses and acquaintances to both the victim and beleaguered actor, turning up occasional clues and red herrings along the way. Guidry, meanwhile, is intent on seeing Kirk punished for the death of his niece and uses his own streetwise resources to bully his way to truth.
Lyle’s medical background is a plus here as he is able to succinctly explain the technical details of the death while keeping the plot churning. The head-to-head confrontations between Longly and Guidry are entertaining reads, with snappy dialogue masking underlying threats. The clues ultimately pit the team of investigators in a thrilling head-to-head confrontation with Guidry in the violent finale.
When he’s not working on his own novel or screenplays, G. Robert Frazier writes about other writers and their works on his blog and other sites such as BookPage and BloggingforBooks. He has served as a script reader for both the Austin Film Festival and Nashville Film Festival screenwriting competitions and is a member of the Tennessee Screenwriting Association. He used to write and edit stories for several newspapers in the Nashville area and he once won a flash fiction contest in Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, so there’s that.