My review of World Enough by Clea Simon appears in the July 2018 issue of Gumshoe Review. You can read this review at the following link: <http://www.gumshoereview.com/php/Review-id.php?id=5933>.

Clea Simon immerses readers and her new series sleuth,  music journalist Tara Winton, in the 1980s Boston club scene in the noir-tinged World Enough (Severn House, ARC). Tara once covered the city's punk rock bands for fanzines that paid little but gave her needed access. Now working in a dull corporate communications job, Tara is drawn back to the heady, long-ago times when her former editor asks her to write a piece on Boston bands for his glossy city magazine. The assignment coincides with the accidental death of musician Frank Turcotte, although Tara wonders if her old friend, sober for 20 years, really just fell down the stairs. And could his death be connected to that of once rising star Chris Crack back in the day? She soon discovers that digging into the past can prove dangerous, but letting go just isn't in her nature. Once a reporter, always a reporter. Simon knows what's she writing about.


from On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever

Crime fiction and music have always been inextricably intertwined. Fans of the genre can tell you what their favorite fictional detectives are likely listening to at any given moment – perhaps even more accurately than they can list their own playlists. With World Enough, former music critic Clea Simon takes the idea one step further, immersing the reader in a very specific place and time within our musical landscape.

World Enough is a memory piece, in which the main character, Tara Winton reminisces nostalgically about the Boston club scene of the 1980s. However, with the wisdom of age also comes the realization that the underground music scene may have been hiding more unsavory activity than expected sex, drugs, and Rock ‘N’ Roll.

Hired for her dream gig – writing a Behind the Music-type article covering the hottest bands of the past – Tara stumbles upon a cover-up. A recent death within her circle of colleagues raises red flags and digging deeper into it exposes more fissures in her history than Tara could have ever imagined. Unsure who to trust, Tara must rely on her own talents to uncover the truth.

Clea Simon so expertly renders the 80’s music scene that readers will find themselves fully transported back to that heyday. As she describes the atmosphere within the clubs, readers will undoubtedly feel the slick moisture on the beer bottles and smell the questionable odors permeating the air. Tara’s research for her article allows the past and present to flow into and from each other like a drug-induced fantasia.

Surrounding Tara – in both time periods – are an oddball collection of comrades with varying degrees of self-awareness. Some have delusions of grandeur, clinging to whatever notoriety they can muster; while others have accepted the harsh realities required when adolescence is left behind for adulthood. Tara stands firmly at the crossroads between these two worlds, able to understand both viewpoints, separate fiction from reality, and able to express it for others to understand.

The crime elements in the storyline are completely organic within this trip down memory lane. World Enough is a perfect example of how to blend setting and plot. Readers will long to hear the songs of The Aught Nines as the background soundtrack to their reading escapades. This gritty and gripping standalone will please fans of both noir and traditional mysteries.

World Enough

A Boston-based noir mystery



by Clea Simon

Severn House

Severn House Publishers



Mystery & Thrillers

Pub Date 01 Nov 2017

I am reviewing a copy of World Enough through Severn House and Netgalley:

The Boston club scene is a place for outcasts and misfits. Tara Winston’s belongs in this world and has been a part of it for twenty years. But now one of the old gang is dead, it looks as if he fell down the basement stairs at his home.

Tara’s journalistic instincts tells her there is something more to Frank’s death. She does not believe he just fell down the stairs, she thinks he was murdered. When she begins asking questions she begins uncovering some dark things about the club scene in its heyday. Beneath the heady, sexually charged atmosphere lurked something even darker. Another death occurred twenty years prior. Is Tara the next victim? Find out in World Enough.

Four out of five stars!

Happy Reading!

Clea Simon is never one to bow to convention. Her highly original, noir infused mysteries stand far above and far apart from the vast quantities of formulaic fare. While I’ve long been a fan of Clea Simon’s unique pet mysteries, World Enough is the first of her non-animal novels that I’ve read. I was very impressed. World Enough takes the reader into the clubland of Boston where in the 80s a generation of hopefuls rocked. Now, years later the scene is tired. Dreams have given way to the realities of growing up and growing older. Tara Winston loved the scene for the music and for the comraderie, but she only begins to delve deeper into the past when Frank, an aging rocker, falls to his death. What begins as a retrospective, a lament for a dying age becomes something more as her suspicions grow and she learns that there was far more going on behind the scenes than she had ever realized, and that the death of a shooting star twenty years before may be linked to Frank’s death.

Clea Simon’s approach to the 80s music scene is frank, nostalgic but not rose tinted. Alcohol and drugs flow as freely as the music, and the long reaching damage caused by both is clearly seen. World Enough is not a traditional whodunnit, and is all the better for it. The novel is about finding the truth and dispelling illusions. The world explored in World Enough is gritty and fascinating, providing readers with a unique taste of the past. I can't praise the novel enough.

5 / 5

I received a copy of World Enough from the publisher and Netgalley.com in exchange for an honest review.

--Crittermom

I loved this book, as I do all of Clea Simon books. She plunged me right into the nightlife scene of Boston. Time passes but Tara still finds it intriguing to haunt the music and club scene, but on learning about the death of Frank, has her wondering if it really was an accident. This book kept me on the edge of my seat and it was a thrill to read. If you love a good mystery, you will love this book!

Well written smart storytelling! I enjoyed getting to know Tara and the people in her circle. I'm a big music lover and it was fun reading a story set in the underground club music scene.

Tara has lost her husband and is divorced. She has a good job but it's boring. So when she runs into an old friend and he offers to have her write a story about the bands and music they grew up with, she says yes. She sees no danger there but there are secrets hidden in the past...

Severn House and Net Galley allowed me to read this book for review (thank you). It will be published November 1st.

Tara remembers the music setting her free, letting her dance in wild abandon, drink what she wanted and to admire the men on the scene. She felt like they were a tight group. She also knew they were a bunch of misfits. They loved their music, they didn't care much about jobs, and they drank and took drugs randomly. They were living that song title: Sex, Drugs, and Rock and Roll.

She's on a quest to see if the lead singer who died those many years ago killed himself or if someone else did. Then another member of her circle of friends dies at the foot of the basement stairs in the present day. Was he alone or was he pushed?

The deeper she digs, the more she finds out what kind of pit they were living in. Everyone ignored things. If you didn't see it, you didn't have to worry about it. Her fantasy land of the past had some ugly pieces of life in it and she finds all that when she rehashes the past.

I did my own share of drinking and dancing when I was in my early twenties, so I could relate to the story. I avoided drug scenes and the people who used them. But it's a fine line. And Tara is too close to the line...

I am into rock 'n roll, and have been around pop groups who haven't 'made it'' and these aspects of the book are very well written. However, the story never really gets going and after a third of the way through I started to miss pages and flick through it. Other people might enjoy the slowness, but it wasn't for me.