Singing the Sadness

Saving a woman's life puts British PI Joe Sixsmith's own life in danger in this mystery by "a master of form and style . . . grace and wit" ( The New York Times).   Best known for his gritty Dalziel and Pascoe novels, which were adapted into a hit BBC series, Reginald Hill "could not have created a protagonist more different" than Joe Sixsmith, the laid-back British PI and church chorister of West Indian descent, who makes for an engaging addition to crime fiction in this winning mystery, available for the first time as an ebook ( Publishers Weekly).   It looks to be a melodious weekend for Joe Sixsmith and his chapel choir. They're headed for the first annual choral festival in Llanffugiol, a village said to be the heart of musical life in rural Wales. But the locals are far from welcoming in this off-the-map hamlet where dread lingers as heavy as the mist. Never more so than when Joe comes to the rescue of a naked amnesiac screaming for her life in a burning cottage. No one claims to know her, or what she was doing on a stranger's property, much less why anyone would want to set her ablaze. Secretly recruited by the owner of the cottage to investigate and, oddly enough, just as surreptitiously by the man's wife, Joe soon discovers that arson is the least of the burning secrets in Llanffugiol.