The Music Box Enigma

On Dec. 19, 1914, Lady Emma discovers the body of her choirmaster husband, Sir Aidan Fonthill, the principal victim in Morris’s limp sixth mystery featuring Det. Chief Insp. Silas Quinn (after 2019’s The White Feather Killer). Sir Aidan is “sitting upright,” a bloody turning fork in his ear, with his hands resting on the piano in the venue where he was due to lead a Christmas concert to benefit Belgian refugees. Flashbacks present a number of people with possible motives for killing Sir Aidan, including a singer he fired after impregnating her. His receipt in the mail of a music box with four German words scratched into the underside, from an anonymous sender, adds some intrigue, but too many pages pass before Quinn, of Scotland Yard’s Special Crimes Department, enters the action. Another murder and the disappearance of the choirmaster’s corpse complicate Quinn’s inquiry, which comes to a disappointing solution. This gifted writer has done better. (Aug.)