It was a dark and stormy day. I was alone in The Current's kitchen. Making coffee strong enough to warp 180-gram vinyl. Suddenly, I saw it — abandoned on the counter. A review copy of a new whodunit, left to be picked up by anyone who felt the need for a quick mystery. I was between books, so I nabbed it and ran. Never looked back.

Libby Cudmore's The Big Rewind is a murder mystery that turns on the mysterious contents of a mixtape. Jett, a Brooklyn millennial with big dreams and small change, finds the tape misdelivered to her mailbox. The tape was intended for Jett's neighbor KitKat, who turns out to be permanently indisposed. As in, dead. Do not turn the tape over, do not press play.

Who did the deed? The cops finger KitKat's boyfriend Bronco, but Jett has some inside information (so to speak) indicating that it can't be him. That leaves it up to the reluctant hipster sleuth to deduce the killer's identity — all while curing her own love life, which is suffering from a terminal case of he's-just-not-that-into-you.

There's a lot going on in Jett's life, and in The Big Rewind. The murder mystery alone grows to encompass not one but two clandestine lovers, while Jett is doing some undercover work of her own as a lingerie shopper for a male attorney who values her discretion. The Big Rewind is best read at a single sitting, if only because otherwise it might be impossible to remember who's who.

The book is also stuffed with music and pop-culture references — even more than you'd expect. To pick a chapter at random, Chapter 7 ("Watching the Detectives") includes allusions to Elvis Costello, Loverboy, Quentin Tarantino, the Village Voice, Broadway, YouTube, Rolling Stone, SPIN, Mad Men, Jack McBrayer, Helen Gurley Brown, Victoria's Secret, The Big Bang Theory, October Project, the Smashing Pumpkins, July for Kings, Warren Zevon, and Prince. That's all in just six pages.

It's almost overwhelming, but if you keep your mystery novels, your romance novels, and your record collection all tossed together in a box, you can simplify your life by trading some of it in for a paperback copy of The Big Rewind.

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