Stuart Dill
ASCAP, the performance rights organization, hosted a book release party Thursday (Sept. 29) for talent manager Stuart Dill,
author of the new mystery thriller,
Murder on Music Row. Dill manages
Billy
Ray Cyrus,
Jo Dee Messina and
Laura
Bell Bundy, among others. Bundy was in the crowd of well-wishers, which also included singer Ashley Gearing, ASCAP chief
Tim DuBois and former Country Music Association director Ed Benson. Dill said he began working on the book, his first, in
the late 1990s, shortly before the song of the same title (written by Larry Cordle and Larry Shell) became a CMA award-winning
hit for
George Strait and
Alan
Jackson. The quality that sets this book apart from other Nashville-based mysteries -- including last year's
Nashville
Noir from the
Murder, She Wrote series -- is that Dill brings 26 years of Music Row experience to his story, which
begins with an assassination attempt during a video shoot on the stage of the Grand Ole Opry. Dill freely mixes real and fictional
people in his plot, and Music Row insiders will notice similarities between certain of his characters and actual industry
figures.
