This is the second in a set of three books set in the Metropolitan Opera in the "Golden Age" around the beginning of the 20th Century. I never got a hold of the first book, A Cadenza for Caruso, but I didn't feel I missed anything by it--this can stand alone.

This was so fun to read I'm tempted to give it full marks really--it was one that was a pleasure from beginning to end, even if it's not a standout stylistically or as a whodunnit. In those respects it's quite ordinary, and it wouldn't occur to me to list Paul's Opera Mysteries as the best of mystery fiction. I'm sure a great deal of the reason I love it so much is that I am an Opera fan, and can't help but be greatly entertained by a picture of the Metropolitan Opera in New York City circa 1915, as told by American diva Geraldine Farrar and featuring as characters the great conductor Toscanini and singer Enrico Caruso. I loved "watching" golden age performances of Carmen and Tosca.

Farrar as depicted here is larger than life--witty, funny, flirtatious, outrageously egotistical even if good-hearted. A blurb from the New York Times Book Review inside avers that "if you think the portrait of Farrar is exaggerated, it isn't. She was exactly as depicted here." Well, she's great, gossipy company as she and Caruso try to untangle the murder of an obnoxious baritone. ( )