3.5 stars

A very entertaining mystery from the 50s with great characters and an interesting setting. Delia Owens is a member of a choir and is present when a bizarre murder takes place at the end of a performance. The victim was not well-liked and suspects abound. Delia's boyfriend is a detective superintendent and relies on her background knowledge to investigate.

I enjoyed everything about this mystery right up until the end. A caveat: Sometimes reading books from a different era with different sensibilities is tough. This novel reveals at the end some homophobic bits that make us uncomfortable in today's world. Thank you to the publisher and to Net Galley for providing me with an ARC in exchange for my honest opinion.

Margaret Newman is the latest female mystery novelist Agora have brought back into print; an author I certainly hadn’t heard of. Yet intriguingly today’s read is the only mystery novel she wrote, and also the only title she wrote under the Newman name, and in the main she was a far more prolific writer of children’s novels and romances under the names of Anne Melville, Margaret Potter, (her maiden name), and Anne Betteridge. According to Agora she undertook various jobs before settling down to writing, including teaching in Egypt, editing a children’s magazine in London, and advising at the Citizen’s Advice Bureau in Twickenham.

Detective Inspector Simon Hudson’s courtship of Delia Jones takes a fraught turn when the choir his girlfriend is a part of, (singing and member of the managing committee), puts on a performance just before Christmas at Festival Hall. They are performing a new Mass composed by their very own conductor, Edgar Tredegar, with the BBC doing a recording of it and even a tenor from Italy is coming to take part. Yet the managing committee is far from a happy group. Tension and strife ripple upon the surface and seem to have exploded into the open when the assistant conductor, Owen Burr, is shot just as the performance concludes. Based on the victim and the angle of the bullet there are three areas from which he could have been shot, many of which containing choir members. It goes without saying that Owen was not Mr Popular and he seemed to have a real talent for being insufferably rude and unkind.

Once Hudson has put his foot in it, asking his girlfriend if she did the deed, his investigation progresses well. Motives are easy to come by for Owen’s murder, yet a second death, which takes place on Christmas day turns things on its head. Perhaps there is more to this case than meets the eye…

Overall Thoughts

I don’t usually quote the opening of a book, so extensively, but I felt it was worth doing so here:

One of these days,’ said Delia, ‘you’re going to answer a murder call and find when you arrive that it’s from the Metro’s Managing Committee.’

Detective-Superintendent Hudson laughed softly in the darkness of the car.

‘I hope I arrive in time tonight, then, to carry you away from the scene of slaughter. What am I liable to find? The whole Committee stretched lifeless on the floor, surrounded by bottles of poisoned beer? Or only the lovely body of Delia Jones, transfixed by eight barbed agendas?’

‘Oh no, thank you: I don’t expect to be a victim myself. But there are times when I expect at every moment to become a witness.’

‘Then you must increase my chances of promotion by telling me the answer in advance. Who’s going to kill who?’

‘Whom.’

‘By that evasion I perceive that you have a guilty conscience. Obviously, you are the murderer. And the victim?’

Delia giggled.

‘I’ve no idea. I’m only sure that Owen will be one of the two. He has an incredible capacity for taking and giving offence—both at once usually.’


I think this extract shows Newman’s confidence and competency when it comes to romantic couples. The contrast between such moments in 1930s novels with this 1959 title is evident when we get, (slightly) more racy comments such as this one: ‘We have arrived, Delia. I’m the safest driver in London. That manoeuvre was expressly designed to bury your head in my chest, and it has been thoroughly successful. There will be a short pause while I take advantage of it.’ It is a little corny, I grant you, but it does have a sort of modern feel to it and their relationship/courting eschews the soppy as the novel unfolds. Given her romance novel background I would say this element of the book is far from perfunctory, (a criticism sometimes levelled at classic crime novels).

I also wondered when reading this book whether Newman had been involved ina choir society as the opening chapter at the managing committee meeting often comes across as satirical. So, I thought perhaps real life experience of such a group might have influenced Newman’s undercutting edge to her description of this body of people, such as can found in this line: ‘The Managing Committee of the Metropolitana, one of London’s larger choral societies, may have had music in its collective soul, but it had little beauty in its face.’

The case Newman presents us with has its intriguing features, such as the question of when Owen was exactly murdered and also why he took the place of his superior in the first place. Newman provides some interesting “secrets” which tumble out of the woodwork as the story goes along and I enjoyed the way she has Hudson discuss the case with Delia. I think she writes this part of the plot in an interesting way. Nevertheless, I think romance was more Newman’s line than mystery writing, as I think a seasoned mystery reader will quickly notice who the killer is. I certainly latched on to them when two key moments occurred, so I was anticipating a specific plot development. When it was not revealed during the middle of the novel, I had to assume it was intended to be the finale. The lack of attention it was receiving, despite the nod given to the reader, made my detecting hunch antennae twitch! The solution is of its time and perhaps in some ways is a simpler answer to put forward, as it doesn’t entangle the writer in complicated murder method mechanics. Yet it is a shame Newman didn’t persist in the mystery writing genre, as it would have been interesting to see how she progressed.

Rating: 3.75/5

I thoroughly enjoyed Murder to Music by the new-to-me author Margaret Newman. The musical setting in the Royal Festival Hall was excellent and the book reminded me a lot of earlier Golden Age fiction, such as The Wind Blows Death by Cyril Hare.

There was a nice bit of romance between the policeman Simon and his chorister girlfriend Delia, and the ending was satisfying. The writing did not feel like it was sixty years old, although the social mores in the book are definitely of an earlier time than today. Margaret Newman is a worthy addition to Agora's Uncrowned Queens of Crime.

Thanks to the publisher and NetGalley for providing a review copy in exchange for honest feedback.

In this crime story we follow Superintendent Simon Hudson who investigates the murder of a conductor. The setting is London and takes place in the 1950s.

What I liked:
The characters and how it was only a small group of people who were suspects.
The case and the directions it took
There were a lot of unexpected twists

What I did not like:
It is a story originally published in 1959 so it is unfair to judge it with a modern eye however the way Simons girlfriend Delia described the fat distribution of a woman in the beginning of the book was weird.
A really irritated aspect of the book was the Superintendent himself. I said I like the characters and I did enjoy Simon but he kept on telling everysingle person inclusing potential suspects every detail of the case. He told them about new clues and evidenence he found. He also kept on telling suspects what the other ones have said. It just seemed very unprofessional.

Overall I did like this story and I wish there was more stories from Simon. (Despite me having an issue with his investigations)

This could have been the start of a great series had not the author gone in different literary directions under different names. DS Simon Hudson and his future wife, Delia Jones, are an interesting couple and could have been worthy successors to ER Punshon's Bobby Owen and Olive.

As a former chorister and committee member of an amateur choir, I can attest to the accuracy of much of the background to a well-handled tale of a conductor murdered in the Festival Hall.The characterisation is vivid and the plot neatly tied-up, with a the perpetrator not too obviously clued.

This is a worthy addition to the publisher's new Uncrowned Queens of Crime series. I read it all in one go, which is a tribute to the clarity of the writing and the flowing style.

Very recommendable.

Thank you to NetGalley and Agora Books for the digital review copy.

Thanks to Agora Books for a review copy.
Murder to Music, originally published in 1959, is the second in Agora Books’ ‘Uncrowned Queens of Crime’ season and is well deserving of its place.
The story revolves around an amateur choir’s debut performance of its ageing director’s latest composition, a mass which he hopes will help him secure his knighthood. The performance is to take place in the Royal Festival Hall and be broadcast by the BBC so the stakes are high both for composer and singers.
Behind the scenes however petty bickering, jealousies and old rivalries serve to set those on the choir committee at each other’s throats. Central to the unpleasantness is the deputy conductor who is a both unsympathetic and tactless when it comes to handling the choir and the committee. It is scarcely surprising when he is shot dead at the end of the performance and Detective Superintendent Hudson, attending the gala to support his girlfriend who both sings in the choir and sits on the committee, is tasked to investigate.
We need to suspend our disbelief that a police officer who is in a relationship with someone in the case would actually be allowed to investigate events but to be fair to DS Hudson, he is not shy in investigating all the key players thoroughly and risks alienating his girlfriend by asking her some very searching questions.
As the case proceeds things take a darker turn as a professional singer disappears and another member of the choir is attacked at home.
The case is set over the Christmas period and the author is able to conjure pictures of the snowy streets of London and the iced-over fields of Kent. She also manages to convey DS Hudson’s resentment of having to work over Christmas and his desire to solve the crime and hopefully exonerate his girlfriend without being heavy handed with emotional prose.
One of the strengths of the book is the delightful characterisation of the cast of people involved. The choristers and musicians come over as being a little highly strung and over sensitive but are by no means caricatures or unbelievable in the way they are written. My wife has extensive experience in choirs and orchestras and tells me that the situations and feuding described (with the exception of murder of course) are not so very far from the norm.
Although the story is primarily a mystery it is also very funny in places with witty and clever dialogue which made me laugh out loud. This is beautifully worked into the prose so that it never takes over from the main thrust of the novel but allows the lighter moments to shine through.
The solution when it comes is actually deeply tragic and, although the clues are there from the start, the realisation as to what has driven the murderer to act in the way they do is nevertheless horrific and understandable.
The author is not afraid to touch lightly on themes such as mental illness and homosexuality despite the fact that these were still largely taboo subjects at the time of writing. As ever though these are not rammed home with a heavy hand but form a natural part of the evolving tale.
I would wholeheartedly recommend this book to any lover of entertaining and well written classic mysteries. This was the only book published by Margaret Potter under the her maiden name of Margaret Newman under her own name though wrote extensively in different genres and under a variety of names until her death in 1998. She well deserves her place in the Uncrowned Queens of Crime season and will hopefully be enjoyed by many new readers.

Well this was a thrilling story. I really enjoyed how the plot unfolded and liked the twists and turns in it. I found that the way it was written was different to what I'm used to - there were very little descriptions of people and places and most of it was dialogue, but I found that the story progressed quickly because of this which was good. I found the story to be a bit predicable in the last couple of chapters, but I was still intrigued all the way throughout.

I feel that the style of writing made more sense once I'd realised that this was originally published in 1959. It did have a very Agatha Christie-esque feel about it and I think it would make an excellent TV adaptation. This being said though the story has stood the test of time and is still an excellent read today.