SINGING THE SADNESS

If only the Boyling Corner Chapel Choir’s bus hadn’t broken down on its way to the first annual Llanffugiol Choral Festival; if only the road signs in Welsh and the few passersby hadn’t been so equally unhelpful; if only they’d arrived ten minutes earlier or later at the site of Copa Cottage—then Luton p.i. Joe Sixsmith would be singing along with his mates instead of lying in Caerlindys Hospital nursing his larynx and some other tender bits, acclaimed as a hero for running into the burning cottage and rescuing a woman whose condition is still critical. And since Joe’s already rescued her, what’s more natural that being hired to identify her—first by London TV producer Fran Haggard, who owns the cottage; then by Fran’s actress wife Franny, who wonders if the burn victim was Fran’s bit on the side; and finally by Owain Lewis, the well-connected local schoolmaster’s teenaged son, whose motives are too private to share with a private eye but whose cash looks just as good as that of his elders. There’ll be much, much more, of course—rumors of a homosexual seduction that led to an innocent boy’s dismissal from the school long ago, the collapse of the festival stage at an inopportune moment, Joe’s tango with a pair of salt-and-coppers, and his manly refusal of an eager teenager’s advances—before a final sad twist ties it all together. A charming postcard pendant to Joe’s three more sociologically weighty adventures back home in Luton (Killing the Lawyers, 1997, etc.).