More coffee. That would be a start. Maybe I should just mainline it. Tara laughs at herself, at the truth of it. If I can just get through this one page…

She closes her eyes for a moment, just to give them a rest, and she’s back once more at the club. No, she shouldn’t have gone out last night. She’s not a kid any longer, and her job – manager of corporate communications for Zeron – requires regular, wide-awake hours. But, oh, the band sounded good last night! Phil, the singer, still had it – that rock-star presence – that drew every eye as he grabbed the mike. As he lifted the stand up and wailed. And Joey, the drummer, kept them all moving. Got them all up on what passed as a dance floor in that rundown pub, shaking it as if it had been twenty years before.

“If we had world enough, world enough and time. . .” She’s humming, but at least it keeps her from dozing off. Mornings like this one, she regrets taking this gig. If she were still writing about music, she’d be raring to go. Struggling with how to capture the energy of the night, how to describe the thrust and pull of the music. Failing, most likely, but having fun doing it. What was the old saw? Writing about music is like bicycling about architecture. And what is she doing now? She stares at the computer screen, at the page before her. Priority One: Client conference update. . . Yawn.

She sighs, and makes herself sit up. She’s got to read this report. Coffee. That’s her drug these days, and she’s probably an addict. Well, at least it’s a harmless drug – and legal. Not like all the other stuff that was going through the clubs, back in the day. She didn’t partake of that – nothing harder than the occasional line – back when she was a rock critic, writing about something that really mattered. Seeing the old crowd last night, she couldn’t help but remember. Was it really twenty years? And now Frank was gone. Clean and sober, but just as dead as that singer, the one from that band – the Aught Nines? – who should have been a star, all those years before. . .

You can read more about Tara in World Enough, a Boston-based noir mystery.

This intriguing, hardhitting, intricately-plotted mystery set in Boston’s clubland marks an exciting new departure for cozy author Clea Simon.

The Boston club scene may be home to a cast of outsiders and misfits, but it’s where Tara Winton belongs; the world she’s been part of for the past twenty years. Now, one of the old gang is dead, having fallen down the basement stairs at his home.

With her journalist’s instincts, Tara senses there’s something not quite right about Frank’s supposedly accidental death. When she asks questions, she begins to uncover some disturbing truths about the club scene in its heyday. Beneath the heady, sexually charged atmosphere lurked something darker. Twenty years ago, there was another death. Could there be a connection? Is there a killer still at large . . . and could Tara herself be at risk?

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Giveaway: Leave a comment below for your chance to win a World Enough/Aught Nines t-shirt (the band in the book). U.S. entries only, please. The giveaway ends November 4, 2017. Good luck everyone!

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About the author
After three nonfiction books and 22 cozy/amateur sleuth mysteries, Clea Simon returns to her rock & roll past this fall with World Enough (Severn House), an edgy urban noir. She is also the author of four mystery series with cats in them, the most recent being the black cat-narrated As Dark As My Fur (Severn House) and the “pet noir,” When Bunnies Go Bad (Poisoned Pen Press). A recovering journalist, Clea lives in Massachusetts. She can be reached at cleasimon.com.

All comments are welcomed.