The Lucifer Chord

A familiar horror theme—the musician who makes a Faustian bargain for success—gets a nifty spin in this occult-tinged thriller. Of course writer Ruthie Gillespie is aware of the apocryphal rumors that Martin Mear, the 40-years-dead leader of the iconic ’60s rock band Ghost Legion, dabbled in black magic. Nonetheless, she takes an assignment to research an essay on him for a definitive box set of the group’s recordings. But when she discovers that Martin’s beloved uncle Max was connected with the secretive Satanic cult the Jericho Society—and when people around London whom she interviews about the band’s meteoric rise begin dying under mysterious circumstances—the purported begins to look increasingly like the probable. Cottam keeps the supernatural inflections largely to the margins of his story, developing it as an intricate mystery grounded in the mythology of rock music and its fandom. The result is a sinewy spooker with plenty of unforeseeable surprises. (Sept.)