This series is one of my favorites because our heroine, Nanette is believeable. She lives her unconventional life playing saxaphone on street corners in NYC. This book has the best opening I've ever read in any mystery. Nanette, on a drunken binge is thrown out of a party by her date! But wait, it gets better from there. What I like most about this series is that the author has crafted a believeable heroine with flaws and frailties that I can relate to. Who'd have thought you could weave rap music and voodoo into such a good story! While the plot isn't the tightest, the characters more than make up for it.

If you enjoy character driven mysteries, you'll love Drumsticks. However, the plot was a bit confusing and unbelievable. I gave it 4 stars because despite it's flaws it's always fun to hang out with Nanette Hayes for 200 or so pages!

Nanette is at it again, I love this series. I laughed and laughed. Charlotte Carter is the one of the best and her Nanette will keep you interested. I can't wait to see what will happen with Andre....

Thank you Charlotte for the entertainment.

This fast-moving yet thoughtful mystery is refreshing on a number of levels, in particular because the crime solver isn't a middle-aged white guy who cracks wise about the same topics as every other detective in American crime fiction. Other plusses are the Paris setting and the interesting peek into the world of black musicians over the past several decades. Give this one a whirl; it's worth your time.

Here is a book that is quick on a good evening and won't totally bog the reader with a lot of filler. Nanette Hayes, on request of her mother, goes in search for her idol, Aunt Vivian, who seem to have left a couple of cryptic messages with mom. On route of searching, she is derailed by playing sax on street corners, meeting her male antagonist, who will be her lover, dirty dives, and a hotel room where her aunt resided. A duffel bag, one hundred dollars in a jacket pocket, and a picture of a old jazz musician puts her and her new conquest on the search, and somehow leads her to the missing relative, along with the drama and danger that comes along. Straight to the point and humerous, Nanette is a heroine that will charm you and a story that will keep you turning the pages.

Charlotte Carter's absorbing Coq au Vin is a witty, erotic and moving love song to Paris and its "glamorous black past" of jazz musicians, singers, and artists. Sax-playing New Yorker Nanette Hayes is on a mission in her beloved Paris to find her missing free-spirited aunt. Nanette finds hot sex and romance first, and big trouble second, confirming her fear that she brings doom to those she cares about. While the mystery is slight, Coq au Vin's romantic comedy is the real deal, and so is the serious heartbreak.

As a mystery-lover, I was excited about potentially finding a new character series to follow, but I had no success with this book. Carter's style is tiresome and contrived -- I found both the heroine and the plot cliched, overdone, and generally mediocre. It's rare that I read a book and think to myself, "Wow, this is really awful," but that's exactly what I was thinking throughout the entire read. I won't be investigating the sequel or any other Carter creations.

A weak plot and a protagonist I didn't care about made for an unsatisfying read. Carter's hero, Nanette, came across as far too contrived a character for me to get in to. She's a jazz freak, who's got a master's in French and passes her days busking with a sax on the streets of New York, and her best friend is a stripper--ooo, neat. The murder of an undercover cop in her apartment kicks things off, but it never goes anywhere that interesting. Might actually be better as a movie.

'Rhose Island Red' had been sitting on my bookshelf for about two years (all avid bibliophiles have such backlogs), but it was worth the wait. Charlotte Carter gives us Nanette Hayes, a fresh new voice in the world of detective fiction.

Nanette Hayes may be smart and sassy, but she's rather directionless. Armed with a master's degree in French, a love for Paris, a taste for Rimbaud, a refined palate on a beer budget, and a true love affair with jazz, she spends her days playing saxaphone on the streets of a New York that Ms. Carter captures so lyrically.

This novel reminded me of the seminal French film 'Diva', with all the plot twists and unusual characters - crooked cops, $60,000 stashed inside a saxaphone, an elegant yet aging criminal who worships Charlie Parker, and a no-nonsense exotic dancer with a taste for Wall-Street investments. Oh, and a gay lower-level mobster who becomes Nanette's confidente of sorts.

The story centers around the urban legend of the Rhode Island Red, a saxaphone that was supposedly given to Charlie Parker from a mobster as a bribe to play at a wedding. A saxaphone that was reportedly filled with heroin.

Charlotte Carter writes in the breezy rhythmic style of a jazz musician, and the book was a joy to savor. I can't wait to get my hands on the next book, 'Coq Au Vin'. Our heroine goes to Paris...ooh la la!