THE HAUNTING BALLAD

Private eye Lee Plunkett ventures forth from Thelmont, Connecticut, to solve the murder of a professional songcatcher in the Greenwich Village of 1957.

Not that the police think Lorraine Cobble was murdered. Even though she didn’t leave a note, her life was so turbulent they can easily believe she threw herself from the roof of her apartment building a few hours after she publicly accused handsome young troubadour Byron Spires of having stolen one of her songs. Lee, having been present with his eternal fiancee, Audrey Valish, for this blowup, is soon retained by Lorraine’s much younger cousin Sally Joan Cobble, who doesn’t buy the NYPD story of her cousin’s death. Of course, his professional forces would be incomplete without the addition of Mr. O’Nelligan, the unsalaried “assistant” who gave Lee such timely help in his debut (The Séance Society, 2013). It’s lucky that the roguish Irishman is on hand to help, since Byron Spires soon commits a second theft, as Lee realizes to his mortification when he sees Audrey in his company. Fortified by their partnership, Lee and Mr. O’Nelligan interview Lorraine’s downstairs neighbors, the ghost chanter Mrs. Pattinshell and the 105-year-old Civil War veteran Cornelius Boyle; the musical Doonan brothers, who evidently couldn’t keep from stirring up trouble for Lorraine; Tony “the Grand” Mazzo, owner of the Café Mercutio, where the rest of the cast sing their hearts out when they aren’t fighting each other; and Mercutio performers Ruby Dovavska and Kimla Thorpe. And they also hear from Lorraine herself, whose ghostly song accusing her killer Mrs. Pattinshell performs for them.

Another pleasantly retro puzzler whose colorful cast members seem to have nothing better to do than be suspected of murder.