cover image Murder in A-Flat

Murder in A-Flat

Don Flynn. Walker & Company, $16.95 (192pp) ISBN 978-0-8027-5716-6

A missing Stradivarius occupies the center of this stale mystery, inspiring a series of murders solely by its monetary value and not for any higher motive. The violin is mainly an object of curiosity for Flynn's affable but less than sharp reporter-hero Ed Fitzgerald, seen before in Ordinary Murder and Murder on the Hudson. Fitz's passion is for Ariel, a pretty violinist in a New York-based string quartet, one of whose other players boasted he had a Strad to sell before he was shot. Fitz is drawn further into the case when an eminent violin dealer he interviewed becomes the killer's next victim, and then he himself is shot at. Bits of luthieric esoterica and quotations from Fitz's favored philosopher Marcus Aurelius fail to lift this tale, burdened by an uninventive resolution, above the ordinary. A-flat is apt. (Dec.)