MOJO HAND

By Greg Kihn
TOR Books, $23.95, hc

With Mojo Hand, this musician turned horror writer comes into his own. In his fourth novel, Kihn brings back rock musician Beau Young, ten years after the events of Big Rock Beat. The decade hasn't been so good to Beau, who survived the bizarre goings-on of the previous novel and went on to mild success as part of Beau and the Savages, composer of one and a half hit songs and married to the lovely Gayle Mimi, B-movie up-and-comer. But Beau succumbed to every possible rock musician's curse, especially the booze and drugs, and he's now divorced from Gayle and late on his child support payments. It's 1977, and Beau is doing "the blues thing," playing lead guitar for the legendary Oakland Slim, a bluesman whose legend is larger than his wealth and whose schedule involves constant gigging. But Beau is happy enough, since he has rediscovered his love of music, cleaned up his drug problem, and started to enjoy life again; he's even friends with his ex-wife, and he's more than glad to turn his royalty checks over for the care of his son.

 Then Beau and Slim are thrust into another bizarre situation. Someone's been murdering old blues musicians, one of them only minutes after leaving Beau and Slim. Beau befriends Annie Sweeny, blues magazine editor, and together with Slim they are immediately able to connect three murders in different parts of the country, in which each attacker used a strange multiple razor weapon to slice and disfigure the victims. Meanwhile, Annie stumbles into an amazing fact: Robert Johnson, legendary bluesman who'd sold his soul to the devil at a crossroads (and written the famous song about it), is still alive even though he'd been poisoned and apparently died in 1934. Annie's love of the blues leads her to try to help him prove his identity and collect untold amounts of money owed to him, but his greedy son intends to cash in by attracting a sleazy record producer who wants a huge slice of every pie, and who knows the identity of the blues murderer and more. 

Stirred into this psychedelic mix is Ida John, the voodoo witch who poisoned Johnson with a potion and turned him into a zombie back when they'd had a scandalous affair; Vincent Spives, a mysterious albino musician who has purchased a real hand of glory from Ida John and who knows how to use its magic to allow him to become the king of the blues; and George Jones, a cop with a nose for strange cases, who can't help but follow up on the theory Beau, Annie, and Slim bring him. 

 Maybe Beau and Annie are too squeaky-clean to be totally real. Maybe Robert Johnson proves his case too easily. Maybe the ending's a little too pat to be convincing. Yet the story hinges so much on Kihn's knowledge of and exuberance for the music world that it makes you want to hum along and tap your feet. When Kihn describes Johnson's stadium gig, opening for a thinly-disguised Rolling Stones, and Beau's feelings as a guy in the band, you can tell he's been there and done that, and the novel's all the better for it. It's just more fun from that "Jeopardy" guy whose love of horror movies was no fluke.