Well, she caught me. I was taken in, I’ll admit it. As I’ve told you, I generally avoid woman authors – not because I consider them inferior, but because I so often find them uncongenial. But I bought a package of three Scott Drayco novels whose author, B. V. Lawson, turns out to be a woman. (The initials should have tipped me off. Fiction authors using initials – at least nowadays – are almost always women.)

Nevertheless, I liked Played to Death, the first book in the series, quite a lot. So sue me.

Our hero, Scott Drayco, is almost top-heavy with backstory. He was a musical prodigy and had a concert career, before an accident damaged one of his arms. He can use it, but it’s not up to playing in public anymore. He became a private investigator, and now he’s suffering trauma after failing to save lives in his last case. He also has chromesthesia, a condition that makes him see sounds as colors.

A legacy from a former client leaves him the owner of a decrepit opera house in the town of Cape Unity on Chesapeake Bay. The town was once fashionable, but is now a backwater; the beautiful building seems hardly worth refurbishing. When Scott goes inside to look the place over, he finds a corpse on the stage next to a piano – shot through the head, with the letter “G” carved into its chest.

The victim turns out to be a local character, a genealogy expert. Scott joins forces with the genial local sheriff, following lines of inquiry that lead back into the town’s past, and to a violent confrontation.

Played to Death was pretty good. The characters were eccentric and well-drawn, and the dialogue was interesting. My only real problem was with some comments expressing admiration for nihilistic philosophy. I’ll go on to the next book, and see whether this worsens.