Murder at the Opera (Capital Crimes) [Mass Market Paperback]

Margaret Truman's latest Capital Crimes novel is "Murder at the Opera," featuring Mackensie Smith and his wife, Annabel Reed-Smith. Mac, a former criminal defense attorney, teaches law at George Washington University; Annabel gave up her legal practice to open a Pre-Colombian art gallery in Georgetown. Mac and Annabel dine at the finest restaurants, live in a beautiful apartment in the Watergate, and routinely hobnob with Washington's elite. They also get involved in murder investigations.

Their latest case is set in the Washington National Opera House at the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts. Mac and Annabel are busy preparing for a new production of Tosca, he as a "supernumerary" or extra, and she, as a member of the opera board. The drama of Tosca temporarily fades into insignificance when Charise Lee, a twenty-eight year old soprano from Canada, is found stabbed to death. At the opera board's behest, Mac asks a former policeman named Ray Pawkins, who happens to be an opera lover and supernumerary as well, to look into the crime. Naturally, Mac and Annabel weigh in with their ideas about who might have ended Charise's life.

All this occurs against the backdrop of a vague terrorist threat hanging over Washington, D. C. There is talk that an unnamed militant group is planning an attack against prominent political leaders. Officials from intelligence agencies in America and abroad tap their confidential sources to gather vital information that may help thwart a potential tragedy.

Margaret Truman is a workmanlike writer who knows how to construct a mystery so that the reader is hooked "until the fat lady sings." She populates her novels with a host of lively characters, and this one is no exception. Besides the urbane Mac and the attractive and brainy Annabel, there is Pawkins, an arrogant private investigator who dresses to kill and drives a Mercedes sedan. The question is, how does a former policeman manage to live so well? Sylvia Johnson and Willie Portelain are partners in Washington's police department who interview Lee's acquaintances, including her jittery roommate, pianist Christopher Warren, and her slimy agents, Philip Melincamp and Zoe Baltsa. Johnson and Portelain are both competent cops, but while she is a beautiful woman pursuing a degree in criminal justice, he is a street-smart veteran of the force with an oversized physique and an insatiable appetite for junk food.

One of the hallmarks of Truman's mysteries is her insider's take on the events in our nation's capital. "Murder at the Opera" has a great deal of information about how an opera is mounted, as well a glimpse of the efforts of the rich and powerful to boost Washington's cultural image. In addition, Truman provides timely information about the ways in which the FBI, CIA, and the Department of Homeland Security react to the news of a possible terrorist action.

"Murder at the Opera" is a breezy and fast-paced mystery, but it is marred by a disjointed conclusion and implausible developments that would not stand up to close scrutiny. However, Truman knows her audience well, and she delivers what they want and expect: a squeaky clean novel with gentle humor, very little gore and just enough complexity to make the reader wonder whodunit and why.

This is a very strange book. The late Margaret Truman Daniels was a highly respected author of excellent biographies of both her father and her mother. She had for years been the author of a series of popular mystery novels based on the gimmick of insider knowledge of life in the elite and powerful portions of the District of Columbia.

She had also been the target of rumors to the effect that some or all of her mystery novels had been ghostwritten. To the best of my knowledge, both Ms. Truman and the author commonly identified as the ghost denied that rumor until her dying day. This book has provided me with reason to wonder whether there might be something in that rumor after all.

Margaret Truman first came into focus as a specific individual to me and to the general public when she received an unfavorable review for a vocal recital. Her father, POTUS, himself, Give-'em-hell-Harry, took exception to that review--publicly. Young Miss Truman continued on with her not especially lustrous singing career until her marriage and passage into a fairly rarified sphere of the Establishment.

The book at hand, "Murder at the Opera," is another in the series that features Mac and Annabelle Smith as its ostensible protagonists. In this outing, Mac, who has abandoned his practice as a criminal defense attorney for the dubious pleasures and rewards of the academic life, has been dragooned into the task of serving as an extra--with full explanation as to why "supernumerary" is his correct title--in a production of Puccini's "Tosca" at the Washington National Opera. Mac is quickly shown to be almost completely clueless with regard to opera, so the book takes on the task--in addition to everything else expected from a mystery!--of explaining to Mac and by extension the equally clueless majority of the readers who acquire the book, about opera in general, about "Tosca" in particular and the process by which the whole preposterous / magnificent spectacle is put on stage before an audience.

So far, so good, but things get very strange in the execution. Considering that Margaret Truman had been a professional singer, herself, the portions of the book dealing with opera are astonishingly bland, even namby-pambyish. For example, beyond a casual mention of the widespread terror of colds suffered by singers, there are no "singer-ish" concerns expressed.

Opera fans live by artistic fine-tunings and disputes: this director is a genius, that one is a Eurotrash regietheater barbarian; this tenor is a magnificent star, that one a stumblebum; Wagner (or Verdi or Strauss or Britten) a brilliant figure of eternal greatness, Wagner (or Verdi or Strauss or Britten) a tired old hack who wasn't much on his best day and whose time is long passed. I once saw two fans in the standing room area of the San Francisco Opera come to blows over whether Enrico Caruso or his great predecessor, the barely recorded Jean de Reske, was the better singer! There's none of that in this book: the Washington National Opera is wonderful, "Tosca" is wonderful, the director for this production is wonderful, the (unidentified) singers are wonderful, the understudies are wonderful, the performance is wonderful. Yechh--it's enough to make any real opera fan fearful of falling into sugar shock.

Finally, there is a review of the opening night performance of "Tosca" which is supposedly quoted in its entirety. It praises the WNO, the production and the director but contrives not to say a single word about the singers and singing. That, let me confidently assure you, is not the way it's done--and a former professional singer like Margaret Truman would doggone well have known it.

As for the rest of the book, those two protagonists, Mac and Annabelle have to be among the most arid, vapid, desiccated, and boring characters ever put on paper. The villain-in-chief is less of interest than Mac and Annabelle. And the lesser villains even less than that. Earlier Amazon reviewers have complained about a major plot twist which yanks the book out of the course it had been following for most of its length. They were fully justified in their complaints.

This book is not good. It's not strong enough to be bad. It is a textbook example of mediocrity.

Three stars.

One thing about this book-the plot of Tosca is fully revealed. When nothing exciting is happening, Margaret Truman explains Pucini to the uninitiated-myself included.

The other thing about this book is that the plot structure is closely modeled on those from Italian opera. This means in practicality that the real villain must be someone we would find villainous today. That means Middle Eastern terrorists. That the terrorist plot subplot seems contrived escapes Ms Truman. In modern thrillers the chase is the thing, but in this book the terrorists come and go in clouds of dust and mystery, and nobody you find interesting even knows about them.

I particularly found the continuation of the Opera Ball after an assassination attempt to be laughable. Remember 9/11? Everyone wanted to get out of any possible line of fire and hurried home. In Washington society they dance the night away.

If the DVD is broken and the cable out, you might pick up this book. Otherwise look for the new Michael Connelly or Robert Parker.