Dark End of the Street (Nick Travers)
Jazz historian and wannabe PI Nick Travers comes to the aid of a young  woman in trouble and gets in a lot more as a result in this lively caper  involving the Dixie Mafia, a decades-old murder, political skullduggery, and a  hit man who thinks he's Elvis's younger brother. A strong narrative and  excellent sense of place pervades the newest outing in this good--and getting  better--series, but what matters almost as much is the music both the author and  his hero love, which reveals itself in the nicely cadenced prose and a plot  featuring the old Delta blues men Atkins admiringly portrays. It all makes for  an enjoyable evening of reading that would have been even better if they'd  shipped a CD of the music Nick and his creator like best along with it.--Jane Adams