I am rather particular about what short story collections I read, I like there to be a theme or some kind of link between the stories….so Music of the Night is right up my alley. A collection of writers writing crime all based around Music, most impressive is the number of different ways music has been woven into the narrative, from rock bands, struggling composers, jazz musicians, record collectors and a blatant attack on the mighty Annie Lennox there is nothing repetitive about this collection.

Before starting this I saw a reviewer on Goodreads saying this was a disappointing collection, I have no idea what they read as there are some proper good gems here. Stand out stories were Love Me or Leave Me: A Fugue in G Minor using text messages to evolve the story to it’s unexpected conclusion, Taxi! was fantastic the most violent and desperate of the collection, Some Other Dracula had a real murder mystery evening to it and Not a Note which will have a twist ending you won’t be expecting. My favourite has quite surprised me as it had the weakest link to music, detectives chatting about music in the car but it grew on me as the story was less about the murder and more about the process the detectives take to come to their conclusion including using all the technology available to them, No More ‘I Love You’s’ was top for me.

The biggest strength this book has is there is none of the TV detective series silliness that rely on the criminal easily confessing to the crime to wrap things up, the detectives do all the work here, massive praise goes to these talented writers for managing to do this in so few pages.

Blog review: felcherman.wordpress.com/2022/05/30/music-of-the-night-from-the-crime-writers-association-edited-by-martin-edwards/