Book Review: Ransom at the Opera

Reviewed By: Harriet Klausner

Ransom at the Opera     Amazon US PB Amazon US HC Amazon Canada PB Amazon Canada HC
Fred W. Hunter
Class/Genre:   Mystery   Classic
Series: Ransom / Emily Charters # 7
St. Martin’s, Nov 2000, $22.95, 256 pp.

The opening performance at Chicago’s new Sheridan Center for the Performing Arts is David Cunningham and director Marc Berger’s interpretation of the classic opera Carmen as a musical. Highly talented but somewhat unknown Riccardo Nuevo stars as Don Jose and Maria Cortez plays Carmen.

The production, which defies operatic guidelines as the performers dance while singing on stage, is successful until the climax. In the final act, Don raises the knife to kill Carmen, but instead the actor Riccardo crumbles to the stage floor. The medical examiner reported Riccardo died from a pulmonary edema, not a probable cause of death for a healthy thirty-year-old. Detectives Jeremy Ransom and Gerald White are assigned to investigate whether someone poisoned the victim. They start the inquiries by visiting a friend Emily Charters who attended the show. From there, they visit the large cast and support crew trying to uncover the insider who killed the star.

RANSOM AT THE OPERA, the seventh Charters-Ransom tale retains the freshness of the series that cleverly incorporates a cozy inside a police procedural. The story line is filled with several twists and turns, as numerous suspects seem viable with motive, mean, and opportunity available to them. The lead characters are fun to observe in action especially the interrelationships between Jeremy and Emily and Jeremy and Gerald. Fred Hunter turns a night at the opera into an entertaining who-done-it.

Harriet Klausner

Reprinted with permission. Do Not repost without permission from the author, Harriet Klausner