Murder to Music: Musical Mysteries from Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine and Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine

by Cynthia Manson (Editor), Kathleen Halligan (Editor)

Gathers short mysteries by Agatha Christie, Cornell Woolrich, George Baxt, and Lillian de la Torre

Genres: Short Stories

254 pages, Hardcover

First published July 1, 1997

About the author

Cynthia Manson is a literary agent, formerly Director of Marketing at Davis Publications, publishers of Ellery Queen and Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazines. She has also edited several anthologies.

Reviews

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

I came to this anthology not expecting a great deal, and was pleasantly surprised by what I found. (4 stars is a bit of an overrating, but the book definitely deserves better than 3.)

None of the stories is outright weak although two of them, "Death at the Opera" by Michael Underwood and "The Spy who Went to the Opera" by Edward D. Hoch seemed odd choices, the former because it would have seemed more appropriate in a club story anthology than a mystery anthology (it's excellently told, but the solution to the "mystery" element is glaringly obvious) and the latter because, although again well told, it's based on a childish premise. And there are some very strong entries here: "The Sultans of Soul" by Doug Allyn, "Elvis Lives" by Lynne Barrett, "The Right to Sing the Blues" by John Lutz and "Concerto for Violence and Orchestra" by William Bankier; the last of these, which concludes the book, isn't a mystery or even a crime story at all, but is such a fine little piece that it seems perfectly consonant with the rest. Also of note is the Cornell Woolrich entry "Death Between Dances"; his writing can sometimes be merely functional, but not here.

I did skip one story, Lillian de la Torre's "The Viotti Stradivarius": for some reason I find Boswell's writings on Johnson quite unreadable, so a story written in pastiche was decidedly not designed with me in mind. (Cue a chorus of But it's the best story in the whole book, you fool!)

The book could have done with author bios, either accompanying each story or in a section at the back, and I think could have benefited from more than a grudging half-page by way of Editors' Introduction. All in all, though, a good way to spend a few hours. There's nothing that'll pin your ears back -- although a couple of the stories come close -- but the overall standard is good.