The Alto Wore Tweed

When Willie Boyd, sexton at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church, is found dead in the choir loft, having spewed all over the keyboards of the organ in the process; Chief Detective and Choir Director Hayden Konig suspects poison. It was poison, but the bottle of sacramental wine Willie had filched and drunk, the only thing he is known to have consumed, is not the source.

Many people disliked Willie, including the new priest, Mother Lorraine Ryan, whom many Church members find almost as disagreeable as Willie. While suspects are plentiful, clues are sparse, and the motive remains a mystery.

The story is interspersed with chapters from Hayden's unfortunate efforts to write a Chandleresque mystery novel. These passages got a little annoying after show more awhile; but were italicized, so I just skimmed them. The story doesn't need them!

Allover, I enjoyed the book so much that I immediately ordered two more in the series; although I can't imagine how the author can possibly match The Incident of the Escaped Helium-filled Sex Dolls (with dire consequences) and the competing Live Christmas Nativity Displays. Days later, they still make me giggle helplessly. show less

Hayden Konig is the police chief in the small town of St. Germaine, North Carolina, somewhere near Boone. He's also the part-time organist and choir director at the Episcopal church. He is also an aspiring hard-boiled crime novelist. He does his best to undermine the interim priest, a feminist activist. Konig's professional worlds collide when a body is discovered in the church's organ loft. The resulting mayhem is highly entertaining.

Readers with a slightly warped sense of humor who aren't offended by politically incorrect humor will enjoy this fun mystery. Here's a taste:

Being the staff member in charge of the worship service, I thought I had acted in the best interest of everyone concerned when, during Herself's inaugural Sunday, she show more decided that she'd like the congregation to sing Kum-Baya as the post-communion hymn.

After considerable back and forth:

I'll tell you what, I said, looking around in my most Grouchovian conspiratorial fashion. “I'll give you a chord and you start the song. Then I'll pick up my banjo and the choir and I will join in on the chorus. We'll just follow you.” I was mugging about so much that with a cigar in my mouth and a comb under my nose, this performance would be worth of A Night at the Opera.

I thought surely she would see I was being wholly sarcastic. Certainly the other two committee members knew it. She just smiled smugly and ticked the task off her to-do list. No. 3—Emasculate the choirmaster. Check.

“That will be great,” she said, grinning at me like the possum that just ate the nightingale. “Everyone will love it.”

“Yes, you keep saying that,” I added as the committee's collective eyeball size went from ping-pong ball to saucer.

What I forgot to tell her was that I don't play the banjo. At least not in church.

What she forgot to tell me was that she was not a singer by any stretch of the definition.

And the Bishop missed the whole thing.

The mystery was weak and I was disappointed in its resolution. However, the book was so much fun that I didn't care. Best of all, it's the first book in a series. If the rest are as funny as this one, I have a lot to look forward to! show less

Our hero, Hayden, is a chief of detectives (the only detective in town) by day and the rest of the time choir director at the local Episcopal church with a master’s in music composition and a degree in law enforcement.. He drives a ‘62 Chevy that has rolled over the odometer four times, according to the notches he keeps on the steering wheel, and it’s fully equipped with blue lights, siren, and really expensive Marantz stereo speakers. He keeps his ticket pad in the office.

He had a standard way of eliminating dates that seemed incompatible or were going nowhere: the Knock n’ Bach strategy. First stop is knockwurst and sauerkraut followed by the Credo from the B minor Mass (one of my all time favorite pieces of music by-the-way.) show more Before he met Megan who actually loved the stuff, he had a well-earned reputation as a boring date.

The new female minister (Herself) at St. Barnabas Episcopal Church is less traditional than he would like, and requests they sing Kum-Baya. He demurs and doesn’t hand out the music so during the service the minister winds up doing a solo. “She had sounded vaguely like Ted Kennedy doing an impression of Willie Nelson on a bad day. Altogether, it might not have been the effect she was hoping for. The congregation, for some strange reason, didn’t join in, but sat there, mute, as if suddenly struck dumb by the Holy Spirit. “Sorry,” I had said after the service, “I thought you were just kidding about Kum-Baya. But you did a great job.”

Hayden is also a wannabe writer and the title of each book in the series is the title of the book he happens to be working on. His girl-friend Meg, keeps pointing out how awful is his writing and suggesting he enter the Buler-Lytton contest for bad sentences. He prints out a chapter each week and distributes it in the choir folders so the choir has something to read during the sermon. Filled with ridiculous similes and metaphors, the reader is treated to the book within a book. For example: Pulling up a chair, she sat down gracefully, crossing her tweed-covered legs with an elegance belying the sound of tweed-on-tweed, a sound not unlike forty Amish farmers shucking corn. . . She was really ranting now. I could always tell when they were mad. This one was beet-red and her hands were clenching and unclenching the loaded shotgun that I had left sitting on the table. I suddenly realized I had made a tactical error. Still, I had her hooked like a tweed tuna and I had to reel her in. “These ain’t metaphors. Only an idiot would try to use an unlicensed metaphor in a detective story. These what I’m usin’ is similes pure and simple.” I lit a cigar

Some wonderful scenes. I think my favorite is accident scene Hayden is called to where Carleton’s wife leaped through the sunroof of his car, splatting on the pavement. When queried as to why she might have done that, Carleton replies she thought it was the Rapture. She started screaming ‘He’s back, He’s back.’ Then she climbed right out of the sunroof and jumped out of the car.” “Excuse me?” Nancy stopped writing, raised an eyebrow and looked Carlton in the face. “She thought it was the Rapture,” Carlton continued, shaking his head. “You know, like in those Left Behind books. She thought Jesus was going to lift her up into the sky. Look, I was trying to slow down, but she wouldn’t wait till I stopped.” “Why would she think it was the Rapture?” I asked. “We passed a half-dozen naked people floating into the air and then she saw Jesus.” “She saw Jesus?” Nancy asked, pen poised over the paper but seemingly unable to take any notes. “Well,” said Carlton, gesturing toward the pickup truck, “anyway, she saw Arlen.” Arlen Pearl was dressed in a white sheet leaning against his old pickup. He was in his mid-thirties I’d guess, but I didn’t know for sure. He had shoulder length blond hair and a beard but, in my opinion, he didn’t bear much resemblance to Jesus. The tarp came off Arlen’s truck and the eight sex dolls floated off into the sky. “I stopped the truck by the side of the road and I was shouting at the dolls ‘Come back here.’ I guess my arms were up in the air like this,” he said, lifting his hands toward the heavens. “I just wanted them to come back. Sheesh. They cost almost thirty dollars apiece. I was going to sell them to the guys after the party. Then Carlton comes racin’ by and Darlene jumps out of the sunroof.” She was convinced He was coming for her and climbed through the sunroof to get a head start. Priceless.

The naked dolls reappear at inopportune (depending on your point of view) moments throughout. Another classic is when Herself is having a wymmin’s conference and as they chant outside the church, The drums and cymbals began anew with restored vigor to the refrain “Sophia, Sophia, Sophia, shower us with your love.” As they chanted together, their collective voices straining to a frenzied pitch, suddenly one of the womyn screamed and pointed to the sky. They all glanced heavenward and there, framed by the full moon which was still low in the sky, was the goddess Sophia herself. She hung there for a just moment, transfixed in naked beauty, before drifting into a power pole and landing against a transformer. The resulting explosion and shower of fire that rained down on the wimmyn priests was enough to convert most of them back to orthodox Christianity. Four of them checked into the hospital with “severe emotional distress.” Six got into their cars and went home immediately. The goddess Sophia met her untimely end amid the fragrance of electrical conflagration and burning latex. The girls and I just stood and watched with disbelief. “The Lord works in mysterious ways,” said Georgia thoughtfully, “but Arlen won’t be very happy.” Not to mention the Bishop’s memo that all new compositions had to have at least 50% non-white notes.

I intend to read all of this series. Had me LOL. show less

Hayden Konig is the chief of police in a small town in North Carolina, choirmaster and organist at his local Episcopalian church, and wannabe author of noir mysteries. In this first installment in a series, the sexton's body is found poisoned in the choir loft.

I am definitely going to read the rest of these when I can get hold of them. Not so much for the mystery as for the goings on in the rest of the town. Though somehow I doubt whether the author can beat the unfortunate demise of Darlene Puckett by leaping out of a speeding car's sun roof and its repercussions.

An unusual mix of detective, church organist and choirmaster, and small town life delivered with wry humour and excerpts from a Raymond Chandler book-within-a-book by the main character. Funny and clever. Well plotted with nice twists and turns, including a surprise in the last chapter.

Genre: Cozy Mystery
Rating: Good

I confess I missed a lot of humor in this book, since it is based on Episcopal church happenings. But I did enjoy what I understood and found the main character a hoot, literally, when he gets his owl.

The mystery was pretty convoluted and was hard to solve which is a plus especially for cozy mysteries.

If you get all the musical and religious humor you’ll enjoy it probably more than I did.

I loved some of this book such as the mystery, the humor, the music references, the church insider jokes, the characters but I did not like the percentages spent on each.
I would have preferred more mystery, a lot less humor, a lot less music references, quite a bit less of the church insider things and would have preferred a lot more character development.
I thought the book was going to be a mash up of Lake Wobegon, Don Knotts and Agatha Christie - I was wrong.
I enjoyed it from time to time and would consider recommending it but only to a very specific reader.