Description de l’éditeur
A 1940s Hollywood gumshoe heads to San Francisco to foil a very real phantom of the opera in this "believable and entertaining" mystery (Publishers Weekly).
1942 is a dangerous year to stage Madama Butterfly. Although Puccini's masterpiece is a perennial favorite of the San Francisco opera crowd, its sympathetic depiction of a Japanese girl causes tension a year after Pearl Harbor. Newspaper editorialists rage against the production, opera buffs picket the theater, and a note appears nailed to the house door, threatening violence against cast and crew.
But someone is doing more than making idle threats—a self-styled phantom of the opera. When a workman on the opera house renovation is killed, the maestro, Leopold Stokowski, the conductor who starred in Disney's Fantasia, calls Hollywood PI Toby Peters to catch a madman.
With two days to go before opening night, the attacks are building to a crescendo. As Peters hunts for the phantom, he falls for one of the company starlets. But they must tread lightly, or face a finale far more tragic than anything dreamed of by Puccini.
"Hardly a pause separates the frightful, madly comic and nostalgic incidents made believable and entertaining in Kaminsky's artful handling" (Publishers Weekly).
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
In the latest of Kaminsky's popular crime capers recreating lost times and glamorous figures, PI Toby Peters gets an assignment from Leopold Stokowski. The maestro's rehearsals for Madame Butterfly in 1942 incite anti-Japanese protests at the crumbling San Francisco Opera House while ``Erik,'' this opera's phantom, kills performers inside. Although Toby's loyal if outlandish buddies arrive to help, Eric eludes them and the murders continue. The detective himself barely escapes death and arrest for killing while he investigates likely suspects: the fake evangelist leading the pickets damning the debasement of noble Lt. Pinkerton; the opera house's eccentric caretaker; a once-hopeful singer with a failing voice. Hardly a pause separate the frightful, madly comic and nostalgic incidents made believable and entertaining in Kaminsky's artful handling.
