Product Description

Music can be murder....
Oliver, Indiana. Quiet streets. Deep roots. Families and neighbors. Young widow Joan Spencer returns, wondering if anyone can really go home again. She finds few familiar faces, but from those old friends spring connections--and reminders of what long memories exist in small towns.
Actually Oliver is not so small. It has a busy college where Joan's son grows fascinated with biological research. A senior center, where she lands the director's job. An amateur orchestra where she settles into the viola section--and right next to an unpleasant oboist who drops from his chair during rehearsal. Rushed to the hospital, the man dies, if not to universal applause, then to a general sense of relief. A young Japanese violinist is puzzled: the victim displayed all the symptoms of fugu poisoning. The autopsy confirms he's been murdered.
Enter police lieutenant Fred Lundquist. Investigation determines more than one source for the poison, not necessarily the deadly puffer fish, and a wide circle of suspects. He and Joan gradually make connections until--not quite to crashing chords and drum rolls--she realizes they've looked at it all the wrong way round...

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1200763 in Books
• Published on: 2000-04-01
• Released on: 2000-05-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 188 pages

Review
Unpretentious yet nonetheless impressive in its quiet way. . . a virtuoso debut by a new writer.
--Washington Post -- Review

Review
"A chatty, easygoing and conventional first novel....Why C major? Because Schubert's Ninth Symphony, with its great oboe solo in the second movement, is integral to the story.
--NYTBR"

The author shows a comfortable acquaintance with classical music, orchestral instruments (particularly strings and reeds), state-of-the-art biological research...and people of all sorts. Occasionally one wonders where mystery writers find the prototypes of their characters. Frommer's characters are so lifelike that the question never arises....The story is loaded with cogent information and irresistible characters.
--Schenectady, NY Gazette

"'Ironing for a corpse wasn't Joan Spencer's idea of fun.' With an opening sentence like that, you surely have to read on. You won't be sorry....""
--Washington Post"

"Instead of every character being a credible suspect, all seem, like the heroine, to be too nice, too normal, to be evil. Yet the solution is convincing.
--Deadly Pleasures"

Unpretentious yet nonetheless impressive in its quiet way. . . a virtuoso debut by a new writer.
--Washington Post

Customer Reviews

superb plotting
i re-read this mystery this week after two years, and thought i remembered the plot about halfway through--and it would have been a good plot, as i remembered it.

however, i hadn't remembered it accurately--the ending came as a complete surprise, it's that tricky. the clues are all there for the reader to use, but the author subtly guides the reader in the wrong direction.

the characters are well-drawn, the dialogue good, the writing easy and enjoyable. i was surprised to read in the synopsis that this was a debut.

i intend to read all the rest in the series and recommend it to mystery fans who have gotten too good at guessing the plot.

Life is long, take care of what you leave for life to care for
This is a quick gentle read. Yet it questions the mark youthful behavior leaves on folks in the following decades. The characters claim their here and now, but act out of their long ago and far away. And their their plans run amok, as human plans our do. So clearing up this mess invites us all to take more responsibility for the lives we live today in the hope that seven generations will not feel pain at our behaviors.