Murder in a Minor Key - Softcover

Crossman, David A.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0881849979 ISBN 13: 9780881849974

Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub, 1994

Synopsis

Albert, a coffee-stained music lover, cannot understand why anyone would want to kill Professor Glenly or why anyone would suspect Tewksbury of the crime

About this title

From Booklist:

To Albert, an eccentric, absentminded music professor, clothes, money, and food don't mean anything (meals might consist of frozen corn and dry Nestle's Quik). Only music is real, until one day a colleague whom Albert vaguely knows ("Tewksbury, Archaeology") finds himself accused of murdering the chairman of his department. The only clear evidence against Tewksbury is that he argued savagely with the victim about the ancient Etruscans. Appalled that his colleague could be convicted on such flimsy evidence, Albert decides to turn sleuth and prove Tewksbury's innocence. What follows is a sometimes hilarious, sometimes silly story, with the ingenuous musician encountering the vagaries of the real world as he pursues the truth. While some of Albert's adventures are excruciatingly funny, the plot, an expos{‚}e of ambition in academia, isn't terribly original or convincing, and it lacks cohesiveness. Still, this is a sort of cute, sort of heartwarming mystery by a first-time author, and it deserves a place in larger collections. Emily Melton

From Kirkus Reviews:

When womanizing Professor Harlan Glenly's heart attack turns into a case of poisoning, the Boston police arrest Professor Andrew Tewksbury, who'd quarreled violently and publicly with him over the burning question of whether the Etruscans were an indigenous people. But Tewksbury's colleague Albert can't believe Tewksbury's guilty, even after he's convicted and locked up. When an assault lands him in the same hospital where Tewksbury's recuperating from a suicide attempt, Albert helps him escape--then keeps him one step ahead of luckless Inspector Naples long enough for two other people to get killed before the undernourished mystery winds down. Albert, who reveals new depths of vacuity in the term ``absent- minded,'' is an appealing addition to the line of idiot-savant detectives descending from Sherlock Holmes. But once repeated doses of homicide turn this first novel sour, both Albert and his creator seem out past their depth. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Carroll & Graf Pub
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 0881849979
• ISBN 13: 9780881849974
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224