Bree and JP have an unusual history, when they met he was married, though his wife Cilla had just left him, and Bree was seventeen, something JP didn’t realize until it was too late. The two fought JP’s heroin addiction, have dealt with Cilla’s dramatics, addictions and cancer and are always just glad to be back together. Bree agrees to accompany JP on his United States tour, a decision the two quickly come to regret.   

Tabloid biographer Perry Dillon has decided his next subjects will be members of Blacklight. While some of the rockers, lead singer Mac for instance, don’t mind having their lives under a microscope and distorted for shock value, JP, and by association Bree, values his privacy, and knows there are several things in his past he doesn’t want revealed.

On the band’s first night in Madison Square Garden, Perry Dillon is found dead in JP’s dressing room. While none of the band members could have committed the crime, NYPD Homicide Detective Patrick Ormand knows Bree had enough time to commit the crime, and enough reasons to want to keep JP’s past in the past. As the band continues on tour, Ormand is always waiting in the wings. 

As Bree and JP deal with JP’s MS and a mild heart attack he suffers in Boston, the shadow of Perry’s death continues to haunt them until Bree gets a phone call that changes everything for everyone forever.  

Rock and Roll Never Forgets has a very interesting, details of backstage life on a concert tour. More than that, though, it has some incredible characters that really make the plot. JP is very self-absorbed, though not because he is a rock star, just because he is, yet we like him and root for him to understand this and be more attentive to Bree and her needs. Bree is very tolerant of JP, but needs to stand up to him after twenty-five years and be an equal in the relationship. Each desperately needs each other, each finds it hard to let the other know, all the while Cilla still being JP’s wife hangs over the relationship. 

JP and Bree may not be the police’s main focus of the investigation, but know they are in the sights. It is through their interactions with the police that the investigation unfolds, and though they are not actively seeking the killer, ultimately, the killer finds them. 

This is a very rich story with wonderful characters. The setting of a rock band may turn more traditional mystery readers off at first, but the characters are so well-drawn and interesting and the plot so inviting, it soon fades in to the background as any mundane nine-to-five job might.  

--Jennifer Monahan Winberry