This image is the cover for the book Funeral of Figaro

Funeral of Figaro

An opera singer drops dead onstage in a pitch-perfect puzzler from the Edgar Award–winning author of the Chronicles of Brother Cadfael.

A plane crash kills the lead actor of the Leander Theatre’s production of The Marriage of Figaro, in the middle of their rehearsals. The crew, based on the outskirts of London, is shaken. Luckily—or not—owner Jimmy Clash has found a replacement in world-class baritone Marc Chatrier, a notorious womanizer, liar, and all-around cad.

Chatrier’s presence immediately causes tensions to rise dramatically among a close-knit opera “family,” especially when he starts paying too much attention to Jimmy’s star-struck teenage daughter. Then, without warning, the despised singer drops dead in the middle of a performance.

That’s the cue for audience member Detective Inspector Musgrave to make his grand entrance. But the able police investigator is unprepared for the complex drama awaiting him backstage, and a tragically twisted plot that includes dark secrets, jealousies, old grudges, and murder most foul.

As always, the Edgar, Agatha, and Gold Dagger Award–winning author of the Brother Cadfael Mysteries “writes with undiminished skill” (The Times, London).

Ellis Peters

Ellis Peters is a pseudonym of Edith Mary Pargeter (1913–1995), a British author whose Chronicles of Brother Cadfael are credited with popularizing the historical mystery. Cadfael, a Welsh Benedictine monk living at Shrewsbury Abbey in the first half of the twelfth century, has been described as combining the curious mind of a scientist with the bravery of a knight-errant. The character has been adapted for television, and the books drew international attention to Shrewsbury and its history.
 
Pargeter won an Edgar Award in 1963 for Death and the Joyful Woman, and in 1993 she won the Cartier Diamond Dagger, an annual award given by the Crime Writers’ Association of Great Britain. She was appointed officer of the Order of the British Empire in 1994, and in 1999 the British Crime Writers’ Association established the Ellis Peters Historical Dagger award, later called the Ellis Peters Historical Award.

Open Road Integrated Media