THE BLACK PIANO

1st prtg. A fine, unread copy of this trade paperback. What's a little bigamy here and there when you're trying to catch the person who murdered you? Dick Rouston claimed Jane Cowrer murdered his fiancée, which made for a pretty awkward situation, since Jane was equally convinced that Dick had murdered her. No, this isn’t a ghost story, although there is an old black piano that appears to play by itself every night and can only be heard by Jane. Of course, Jane isn’t really Jane. She’s wealthy Gloria Rouston--or at least she was until someone pushed her off a bridge one night while she was vacationing with Dick and several gold-digging friends and relatives. She managed to escape that attempt on her life with only a concussion and a few scratches. She figured the killer(or killers) would just finish her off if she returned home, so she used the wad of money in her purse to pay for a little plastic surgery and went back to her home town to do a little sleuthing, hoping that no one would see plain old Gloria in the new body and face sported by the now glamorous Jane. And she didn’t really set out to marry John Cowrer, the nephew of the woman who helped nurse her back to health, but she had to admit that a new husband provided excellent cover, provided you didn’t think too much about the bigamy laws. It’s another outrageous plot from two of the most inventive mystery writers of the 1930s and 1940s, although the tone in this 1948 novel is a bit darker than usual.…