The Music Lovers: A Harry Stoner Mystery - Hardcover

Valin, Jonathan

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0385299656 ISBN 13: 9780385299657

Publisher: Delacorte Press, 1993

Synopsis

Detective Harry Stoner has seen better days. It's the middle of January and business is slower than a crawl. Curled up in his office with a paperback mystery, a little classical music on the radio, and a bottle of Scotch, Harry's ready to cut his losses and hibernate until spring. The only problem is that Harry's been living off Visa credit and Christmas cash, and the money faucet is beginning to run dry.
Enter Leon Tubin, an odd little man with worn trousers but a pocketful of cash. Leon's a collector of vintage LP recordings and he's sure another member of his music-listening group is ripping him off. They're all jealous of his record library, especially his Wagner-loving rival, Sherwood Loeffler. It seems to be nickel-and-dime stuff to Harry but Leon insists that the recordings in question are worth about ten thousand dollars. Convincing arguments are one thing, an advance of five crisp one-hundred-dollar bills is another. Harry takes the case.
After interviews with Leon's music-loving cronies, Harry is struck by their obsessive audio compulsions but almost positive that when it comes to grand theft, they are all on the up-and-up. It's Leon's blond bombshell of a wife, Sheila, who has Harry doing a double take. What's a woman like her doing with a wimp like Leon? Sheila confides that Leon saved her years before from her days as a swizzle-stick lounge singer, and out of loyalty and true love she'd do anything to protect him. But what does Sheila's past have to do with a bunch of stolen records? A bizarre trail of clues emerges but, in the end, Harry finds his case won't be completely resolved even though he's heard the fat lady sing over and over again.

About this title

About the Author:

Jonathan Valin is a mystery author best known for the Harry Stoner detective series. He won the Shamus Award for best mystery novel of 1989. After writing eleven Harry Stoner novels over a fourteen-year period, he took a break from mystery writing to help found Fi, a magazine of music criticism. He now works as an editor and reviewer for magazines.

From Publishers Weekly:

The world of rare recordings and huge electrostatic stereo speakers is an unusual setting for the 10th appearance of Cincinnati PI Harry Stoner, seen before in the Shamus-winning Extenuating Circumstances. Though Stoner usually works his city's mean streets, this case has its beginnings in a cozier milieu. Mild, middle-aged Leon Tubin is missing some prized and valuable LPs. He's convinced that his fellow stereophile club member and all-around bigot Sherwood Leoffler is responsible and hires Stoner to prove it. After Stoner fends off Leon's unlikely companion Sheila, a former rock singer who has slept with a sizable portion of Ohio's male population, including most of the stereophiles, Leon is beaten while failing to protect her from a kidnapper. Stoner finds a cache of cash in their freezer, frozen assets that make the stolen records look like child's play and recast the likelihood of Sherwood's guilt. Rooting his story in crimes of the past, Valin calls on hard-hitting plotting and plenty of audio lore to yield a powerful conclusion that satisfyingly caps the story's gentler start.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Delacorte Press
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0385299656
• ISBN 13: 9780385299657
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 233