Murder For Choir - Joelle Charbonneau

Murder For Choir

A Glee Club Mystery
Joelle Charbonneau
Berkley Prime Crime
 
Mystery

Coaching Prospect Glen High School’s show choir is not Paige Marshall’s job of choice.  But, until she lands another role with an opera company, it’s what she’s got.  And that’s how Paige finds herself attending the show choir camp held for various Chicago-area high schools.  During the day, she wanders into the new auditorium/stage space, looking for Greg Lucas, the director of the North Shore High School show choir.  Greg is completely obnoxious, from what little Paige has seen, but his choir wins competitions. 
 
She finds Greg, appropriately enough, on stage, sitting at the piano.  Unfortunately for both of them, he’s dead, with the microphone cord wrapped around his neck.  The police seem to think, due to a cell phone found in the area, that one of the students is the culprit.  Paige can’t believe it and does what she can to help the kid.  This does not go over well with the detective in charge.  He seems to think he can run his own investigation, but Paige isn’t so sure.  As the ‘new girl’ in town, and the finder of the body, she can ask a lot of questions without looking suspicious.  And she plans to do exactly that.

This is the first in a series that looks to be a lighter, rom-com take on the genre.  Anyone involved in high school choir or music programs will recognize a lot of the players here.  There’s the Prospect Glen choir director, Larry, who makes a good suspect since he’s Greg’s direct rival for the next competition year; there’s Greg’s ex-wife; there’s the football coach who’s extremely unhappy that one of his star players quit football in order to sing and dance.  Plenty of people had plenty of reasons to want Greg out of the picture, it seems, and there are enough twists and red herrings along the way to make the mystery entertaining. 
 
Rating: 6 ½
July 2012
ISBN# 978-0-425-25137-9 (paperback)