Issue #0

Grave Music: An Inspector Bill Slider Mystery (Inspector Bill Slider Mysteries)

Plot

Slider is always happy when something prevents him from finishing the lukewarm food in his canteen lunch. This time his meal is cut short by a dead conductor - some musicians would say the only good kind. Sir Stefan Radek was world famous but little liked in the business - a bombast and an exacting tyrant who was guest conducting with the Royal London Philharmonic. Still, that hardly seems reason to gun him down in a sensitive part of his anatomy during a rehearsal in a neo-Byzantine church in the Shepherd's Bush section of London. As Slider and his suave partner Detective Sergeant Jim Atherton delve into the megastar maestro's private life, they find no shortage of potential suspects, including violinist Joanna and the eighty-six members of her orchestra. Plenty of people are not telling the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, and a host of lovers (past and present), a hotbed of family squabbles, and a tangle of financial misdealings complicate the case. Nobody seems sorry Radek is dead, and everybody seems to have been behaving badly, a combination that would depress any investigator. But at least the case brings Slider into contact with Joanna, and it keeps him away from his boss, "Mad Ivan" Barrington, who appears to be losing his grip on reality as he develops an unhealthy obsession with economizing on office supplies. The trail switches direction and Slider juggles frantically with all manner of facts as he tries to reassemble the pieces of his own life while tracking down a most unlikely multiple murderer.