The Missed Cue

One premiere. One waltz. Two deaths.



Chief Inspector Thomas Reiterer from Graz wants only one thing: a holiday. His team has given him a ticket to the premiere of a new operetta, A Melody for Vienna, on the famous lake stage at Mörbisch. They have also found him a room at Resi's Weinberghof guesthouse, where nobody ever goes hungry.



After a long evening of piano music, wine and barbed remarks, the operetta's arranger is found dead at the breakfast table. He is wearing slippers he swore he would never wear. Then, on opening night, the celebrated star misses his cue in the big waltz in front of six thousand people. He will never sing again.



It isn't Reiterer's case. But he was listening the night before: to a toast "to the true composer", and to a small sigh in the seventh bar that the orchestra never played. The next morning, a page is missing from Resi's old guest book. The local police are quick to make an arrest, but Reiterer keeps asking the one question nobody wants answered: who does the waltz really belong to?



An atmospheric Austrian mystery set among the wine cellars, reed beds and lake stage of Burgenland. It comes with dry humour, Pannonian calm and a detective who only wanted one good night's sleep.



Thomas Reiterer's third case, and it can be read on its own.