cover image Fuel-Injected Dreams

Fuel-Injected Dreams

James Robert Baker. Plume Books, $5.95 (323pp) ISBN 978-0-452-25815-0

Scott Cochran is a manic all-night deejay in L.A. who will turn down a request for Dusty Springfield's ""The Look of Love'' if it means breaking with an evening's theme of, say, death. Legendary '60s music producer Dennis Contrelle, creator of The Contrelle Sound and pop-icon group, The Stingrays, phones in a complaint to Cochran when the d.j. belittles a Contrelle tune on the air, and Cochran gets lured into a web of sadomasochistic sexual intrigue surrounding the reclusive Contrelle and his wife, Sharlene, the former lead singer of the Stingrays whom he's kept semi-imprisoned in a palatial estate since the mid-'60s. Baker makes an ambitious attempt at blending a driven narrative style with a procession of equally driven characters and plot events, but the tale at the heart of his debut novel is essentially a pointless and simplistic record industry roman a clef. (April 28)