This is the second novel in PI Jake Longley series. I've not read the first one but it certainly didn't impact my enjoyment of the novel. Set in New Orleans, Jake and Nicole has been invited by her uncle to sort out a movie-mess. Highly entertaining

Synopsis/blurb ...

Nothing is easy in The Big Easy

PI Jake Longly and Nicole Jamison head to New Orleans at the behest of Nicole's uncle, movie producer Charles Balfour, when his megastar, A-list actor Kirk Ford, awakens in his hotel bed with the body of Kristi Guidry, a local college coed. Ford, in the Big Easy for a location shoot, remembers little of the evening and nothing of the murder. And, to make matters worse, Kristi is the niece of a local mafioso-type who will do whatever is necessary to avenge her death. Balfour is losing money every day the filming is stalled—he needs his actor cleared, and quickly.

Surrounded by glitzy Hollywood stars and intimidated by seedy underworld characters, Jake and Nicole encounter nothing but obstacles. Something isn't right. The facts don't fit. Who would want Kristi dead? Why frame Kirk for the murder? Everyone has an opinion, including Kristi's friends and ex-boyfriend, the local homicide detectives, and a fortune-teller. The clock is ticking as Jake and Nicole struggle to decipher who's lying, who's telling the truth, and exactly who schemed to murder Kristi Guidry. Nothing is easy in The Big Easy.
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My take ...

A-List is the second in the Jake Longly series after opener, Deep Six. I enjoyed it, but maybe a tad less than the first.

The main characters are the same as the previous book. Jake is our narrator, but its more of a PI collective with girlfriend, Nicole; BFF Pancake aka Tommy and his dad, Ray who runs Longly investigations making up the team.

Nicole's uncle is a hot-shot Hollywood type and he needs some help. His star man, Kirk Ford is on location filming in New Orleans and there's a dead girl in his bed. The girl is the niece of a New Orleans gangster type and he's not happy. Kirk's in the frame for murder and he's going to pay one way or another.

The Longly team de-camp to New Orleans and do some investigating. Not everything is as it seems.
I like the dynamics of the book and the interactions of the main characters, in particular Jake and Nicole. There's a subtle wit to their exchanges and it makes for one of those easy reader-character relationships that would be diminshed if one of the pair was missing.

New Orleans as a setting, I can take or leave to be honest. I've read a few books set there (James Lee Burke - maybe peripherally from memory), and in truth it doesn't excite me as much as say Chicago or Detroit, plucking a couple of US cities from the air.

The story unfolds with the Longly's investigating and I think at the three-quarter mark I guessed who did it, if not necessarily the exact why they did it. I don't think my realisation spoiled the last quarter, in some ways it's kind of nice to be ahead of the curve.

Humour, characters, story and pacing were good. There's some action and conflict. Pancake dishes out some bruises to get information and there's a good guys - bad guys vibe with some dumb guys hanging in the middle. Lyle has an easy style of writing which keeps you engaged. Setting was so-so. Overall more to like than dislike.

4 from 5

Read - January, 2022
Published - 2017
Page count - 331
Source - review copy from Net Galley. Apparently I bought a copy as well.
Format - Kindle

http://col2910.blogspot.com/2022/01/d-p-lyle-list-2017.html

Waking up in bed with someone unexpectedly can be odd, but finding yourself in bed with the body of someone else is disconcerting to say the least, which is what happens to Kirk Ford, megastar actor who finds himself with the body of Kristi, who has an uncle who is a New Orleans gangsta in her family who is hell-bent on revenge. Cue calling in private investigators Jake Longly and Nicole Jamison, who head to New Orleans to solve the crime, but they find opposition at every turn and nothing seems to fit together. Who and more importantly why would anyone want Kristi dead or was it simply a set up for Kirk Ford himself?

The wonderful thing about books is that you can become an armchair traveller and never worry about lost passports or missed flights. In this novel we are taken through the bustling streets of New Orleans, famously home to Mardi Gras however, it was lacking vividness at times, a poor player in the overall theme. The story features the requisite street goons and a hard-boiled but honest police detective along with the requisite famous Hollywood actor who may or may not be guilty of murder.

The sexist 'comic' comments throughout the story about Jakes partner Nicole in which they are often having sex in the shower is dull, as is the manner in which Jake is constantly observing her rather-cliched sexiness is a boring and lazy way for a writer to use a female character. Indeed, the characters overall lack depth, also there were so many peripheral characters to keep track of that it became cumbersome in the reading.

This book is perfect as a beach read as it requires little of the reader but a willingness to suspend reality and just have fun.

This book surprised me honestly. It surprised me in a good way. I requested this book on NetGalley, and I didn't read the first Jake Longly so I had no idea what to expect. Also, I didn't think I would enjoy this book as much as I did.

This grabbed me by the synopsis. I thought it was going to be a thriller, but it was more a funny fast-paced mystery. As I didn't read the first one, I was not expecting to know what was really going on. It appears that just the character is the same, not his story. I didn't have any issues following along.

There is a ton of dialogue in this book, which usually I don't mind, but I feel like the main point of the story didn't really get to happen because there was so much dialogue. I did find the characters enjoyable however. They had humor and quirkiness.

I think that Jake Longly is definitely a character to get behind if you like detective/cop/PI stories. His stories are funny and quick.

This book is in the style of a modern day Raymond Chandler or Dashiell Hammett. It’s a great read, set in Hollywood; all the characters superbly drawn. You’ve got the PIs, the superstar, the gangsters - everything you need. Totally enjoyable.

Idiotic

It's a requirement of a mystery novel that the murder make sense, even if it is the twisted sense of an insane mind. We also generally require that the method of the murder and of the discovery of the murder be more than just a fluke. We like it a lot when the secondary characters act in character. You can guess my next sentence.

The A-List was an easy to read mystery that takes place in New Orleans and the description of the city makes you want to go there if you haven’t already been. Needless to say the story centers around a well known actor who hooks up with a teenage girl only to find her dead in his bed the next morning. The investigation focuses on him as the obvious killer and her uncle (himself a mafioso type character) will stop at nothing to find the killer. Enter a number of “salty” characters and it makes this book very enjoyable but relatively easy to figure out. It isn’t what I would call a top notch mystery but certainly was an enjoyable read.

Eh... I wanted to like this book but I also just wanted it to be over. I just couldn't get into the characters.
Kirk Ford is an A-list actor who awakens one morning to find the girl he is "seeing', Kristi, dead next to him and he cannot remember anything from the night before. The movie producer for the movie Kirk is currently working on calls Nicole and her boyfriend who happens to be PI, Jake Longly in to help prove Kirk's innocence. I've read some great reviews on this book and the storyline catches my interest for sure, but it just wasn't the read I hoped it would be. I found myself not caring who carried out the murder, which is unlike me.

** Special thanks to OceanView Publishing, D.P. Lyle, and NetGalley for allowing me to read this book in exchange for an honest review.** Sorry I didn't enjoy this book more :(

Somewhat loosely aping the noir style of detective story, homage is also paid to Star Trek, Star Wars, and Doctor Who in this fast and furious--at least where the heroine's driving is concerned--novel. The opening chapter recalls a previous incident, hinting at a prior tale, but enough details are filled in as you go that this story stands alone quite nicely, thank you very much.

Set in New Orleans, the scents of chickory coffee and beignets at Cafe du Monde contrasting with the stale beer and garbage odors wafting from Bourbon Street at sunrise are carefully evoked; dialogue, at times, brought to mind Robert Parker's Spenser. All good things!

So we have a movie star, gangsters, private detectives and a murder--let's put on a show! And author D.P. Lyle does just that, shifting viewpoints from our hapless, ex-baseball player hero to various third persons as we meet the glamor and the riffraff that make up New Orleans in this engaging novel. "Two thumbs up!" (Disclaimer: I snagged this book from NetGalley, so was reviewing a pre-final-edit copy and did run into a few homonyms or other grammar/spelling glitches; nonetheless the book is well-written and comfortably Big Easy.)

This was a real surprise.
A easy read thriller with plenty of action.
The characters were entertaining and it left me with a smile.

Jake Langley—ex-big league ballplayer, beach bar owner, and reluctant PI- and his sidekick Nicole Jamison head off to New Orleans to investigate a murder at the request of Nicole's uncle who is shooting a movie in The Big Easy. His star, Kirk Ford, has been sidelined after he woke up in bed next to the dead body of Kristi, a local co-ed with whom he had spent the evening. Kirk is a known womanizer, love 'em and leave 'em kind of guy. He has no clear motive to kill Kristi. Is he being framed? When ketamine is found in the blood of both Kirk and Kristi, Jake and Nicole set out to figure out who else might have killed Kristi.

The list of possible suspects is long but there are no clear leads. Meanwhile we are diverted by a wealth of witty repartee and clever dialogue. In the end a cleverly faked DNA test leads to the apprehension of the culprit. An enjoyable romp through the type of characters that frequent the movie world.

This book was a bit slow for me & too “putdown-able”, I’m afraid. Not a total miss but was hoping for a hit. Will check out more by this author and keep my eyes peeled for future. Thanks for this ARC!

It’s a case of who done it.....lots of characters to chose from and you will keep guessing to the very end! Great read

On first blush, this whodunnit presents us with an open-and-shut case. A-list actor Kirk Ford gets drunk and stoned in a locked hotel room with his star-struck girlfriend, only to wake up and find her totally dead and strangled next to him. It had to be him. Surely.

But this is about a locked-room mystery and a duo of private investigators, Jake Longly and Nicole Jamison are called in by the matter's movie producer uncle to make absolutely sure they have the right man.

It doesn't take long for the sleuths to find themselves in a demi-monde of drug dealers and local gangsters where questions do begin to emerge about just how capable the star was of doing it when it appears he might have had rather more than marijuana and booze in his system from that dated night before. The private detectives have to look more deeply for those in both movie star and victim's social circle for who might have had more motive, more means and the how to be the murderer.

This writer knows how to create not just suspense but also a fun and entertaining read. There is an element of James Bond in the telling - the female sidekick is a real badass as a fighter, both seem to enjoy marathon sessions of nookie between their sleuthing as well as enjoying excellent New Orleans cuisine and high-life glamour amidst the piquancy of ever-present danger from the local mob interest. Longly is still finding his feet and capable of self deprecation, but he encounters new challenges with a new-found diplomatic aplomb.

It was eventually possible to identify the real villain, but this only emerges quite late into the novel, so the denouement is still reasonably surprising.

A good entertaining read all round.

I enjoyed many things about A-List, especially the setting in New Orleans and the dialogue between main characters Jake and Nicole. At times, though, I felt like I was missing something, especially when references were made to prior events in the series that I did not fully understand. For instance, I am not sure why Tammy, Jake's ex-wife, is included. I think I need to go back and read the earlier books in the series.

I enjoyed this book and the main characters, Jake and Nicole. Setting in New Orleans was a plus!

I enjoyed this book, I love a bit of humour with my mysteries. The book was well written and the characters were engaging enough to make me want to seek out more stories by this author.

This is my first book by D.P. Lyle. The story is quick and loaded with action and laughs. Keeps you on your toes and guessing the whole time. It’s an added plus for me that it took place in New Orleans, and enjoyed every minute of his travels.

Nicole is a P I and her partner-and lover- is a laid back ex major league baseball pitcher Jake. Nicole got a call from her Uncle Charles who was a famous director who was in Europe working on a film. An A-List actor Kirk had been with a local girl Kristy he actually cared about. He remembers smoking a joint and having sex with Kristy and that was it he woke up in the morning with a serious hangover and found Kristy stabbed to death with a bra next to him in bed and can’t remember anything else from the night before. Jake’s father -Ray has a P I business but Jake and Ray don’t get along and Jake doesn’t want to work with or for his father but he does for Nicole. Nicole,Jake, Ray. and Pancake- who is a huge built computer wizard- all go to New orleans where Kirk is at out on bail working on hids next sci fi movie. Kristy is the niece of the local gangster Tony Gidrey ruled the French Quarter and ran it with iron control and he wanted revenge on Kristy’s death. Tony had loved his niece. Kristy had DNA under her nails as she had scratched her attacker and it wasn’t Kirks. Also the joint had been laced with the date rape drug so Kirk was cleared.
I enjoyed this book. I liked the pace and plot of this book. This book had a lot to it : mystery, murder, humor. New Orleans, gangsters, danger, laced joint, intrigue, movie star. Making a movie, and a lot more. I liked how the author portrayed New Orleans. This kept all my attention all through this book. I loved Pancake and felt he added to this book. I was surprised by the ending. This was a fun, good read. I loved the characters and the ins and outs of this book and I recommend.

This book has all the elements I prize: interesting characters, a mystery right up to the end, great descriptions, and sparkling dialog. Each of the main characters is well-defined and realistic. The pursuit of a murderer who left a corpse in a locked room with an unconscious actor leads down crooked paths through New Orleans. The writing flowed well and made the book easy to read, but very engrossing. While I had read the previous book in this series, this adventure stands entirely on its own. Its entertaining, engrossing and suspenseful.