Monday, July 4, 2011

Review: Swing, Brother, Swing

I hate accordions. They remind me of the boys in the back alley, yowling for me to come out and play when I'd rather curl up by a nice warm monitor.

This little book, a quaint little Ngaio Marsh murder mystery, features a dead accordion player. No, not someone who plays dead accordions; an accordion player who...

(pauses to wash behind her ear)

Where was I? Ah. Swing, Brother, Swing is the tale of an obnoxious accordion player named Rivera who falls down dead onstage when he was only supposed to pretend to fall down dead. The prime suspect, one Lord Pastern, is the guy holding the gun full of blanks. Maybe. Something like that.

Anyway, detective Roderick Alleyn comes on the scene and tries to make sense of it all. Lord Pastern doesn't help matters with his eccentricity -- I suspect he and Gomez Addams were separated at birth -- and seems intent on incriminating himself.

I won't tell you Whodunit, but I will tell you that there's a lot of fun to be had in this book.