5 Mystery Writers Worth Investigating

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Rick Shannon senses that something is wrong when the retired record producers he has been hired to find keep turning up freshly murdered--one with a fork still sticking out of his back. Shannon is a weeknight DJ at a classic-rock station in Vicksburg, Miss., who runs a detective agency by day. The case that drives this Southern-fried page-turner revolves around a dying cotton dynasty, an OxyContin-popping former football star and tapes of a late-night blues session that have been missing for 50 years. Fitzhugh's dialogue is as cool as a pitcher of iced tea, and his characters are just over the top, like a Carl Hiaasen cast plucked from the Everglades and planted, as Dylan would put it, out on Highway 61.