Played to Death is an outstanding and complex murder mystery.
The story centers around one Scott Drayco, former concert pianist, FBI agent and now, a private detective for hire. A private detective whose client has left him an abandoned opera house in the small town of Cape Unity on the Virginia coast. A town with its own set of mysterious characters and where everyone knows your name before your car is parked.
As fate would have it, the next client to hire him is also from Cape Unity; a client named Oakey Keys, that Drayco finds dead in his newly inherited opera house. Having no idea why Keys wanted to hire him, Drayko befriends the towns Sheriff and the two of them begin to dig into, what will become, the first of several murders and a complex web of mysteries.
Two things soon become apparent: Drayco has his own share of ghosts that have followed him to Cape Unity and, the further he and the Sheriff dig into history of the opera house, the more town mysteries and ghosts he adds to his collection.
When the pieces finally start to come together, they keep leading him back to Konstantina Klucze, a polish pianist who performed at the opera house in the 1950’s just before it closed; Key’s wife Nanette and a tangled web that involves just about everyone else in town.
If all of this sounds involved, it is! But, somehow, BV Lawson manages to keep things from getting too confusing and even manages to keep a raft of characters from becoming lost in the twists and turns.
I totally enjoyed Played to Death. It is exceptionally well written, with characters and sub-plots that are complex, yet easy to follow and a main plot that will keep you guessing from cover to cover.
My recommendation: An outstanding mystery that will make you want to keep reading long past your bedtime and have you reaching for the next book in the series as soon as you’re done.