The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers
A Novel
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4.5 • 2 Ratings
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- $14.99
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
Perfect for fans of Daisy Jones & The Six and Almost Famous, a gripping debut about the complicated legacy of a legendary rock band and the ghostwriter telling their story
Three Rock & Roll icons. Two explosive tell-all memoirs. One ghostwriter caught in the middle.
Anke Berben is ready to tell all. A legendary model and style icon, she reveled in headline-grabbing romances with not one but three members of the hugely influential rock band the Midnight Ramblers. The band members were as famous for their backstage drama as for their music, and Anke is the only one who fully understands the tangled relationships, betrayals, and suspicions that have added to the Ramblers’ enduring appeal and mystique. That is most evident in the mystery around Anke’s role in the death of Mal, the band’s founder and Anke’s husband, in 1969.
When Mari Hawthorn accepts the job to work with Anke on her memoir, she is dead set on getting to the truth of Mal’s death. She has always been deft at navigating the fatal charms of celebrities, having grown up with a narcissistic, alcoholic father. As she ingratiates herself into the world of the band, she grows enchanted, against her better judgment, by these legendary rock stars. She knows she can’t get pulled in too deep, otherwise she’ll compromise her objectivity—and her integrity.
Filled with all of the glamour and attitude of rock and roll, The Last Days of the Midnight Ramblers is a bighearted page-turner that will appeal to fans of Daisy Jones & The Six and Almost Famous.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Tomlinson (Good Girl, a memoir) draws on her ghostwriting career for a breezy story about a woman who gets paid to write the memoirs of aging rock stars. Mari Hawthorn has grown tired of living in the shadow of her famous subjects. Her fortunes seem to be turning, though, when she gets an opportunity to coauthor a book with former model and socialite Anke Berben, whose mystique was amplified in the 1960s when she married Mal Walker, leader of the Midnight Ramblers, a fictional rock band analogous to the Rolling Stones in their popularity and libidinous excess. Like many famous rockers, Walker "lived too hard and died too young," but mystery has always shrouded his death by drowning in 1969. Now Berben claims she's willing to share the true story of what happened to her husband. Recognizing that this could be the big break she's been desperate for, Hawthorn digs in deep to coax out the truth from Berben and Walker's bandmates. Tomlinson ably parlays her knowledge of the ghostwriting trade into an entertaining tableau of rock and roll's grit and glamour. Classic rock fans will find much to enjoy.
