One of JF’s choices from the horror/thriller line, but I was also attracted because of the title and the bloody violin on the front cover. However, I was quite disappointed that the fiddle/fiddler/fiddling has no big part to play in the main plot - the only fiddler is the blind fiddler who gets killed in the beginning of the book. It's more of an allusion to the killer, I think, who fiddles, or intervenes, in the lives of the ones he murders.
McBain had the task of creating some random murders in random ways and finding a way to connect them all, which he did, and made it enjoyable. You sort of know whodunit midway into the book (why else would he be telling the guy's story as a subplot if he wasn't the killer?) but what you don't know is WHY he did it, which keeps one reading to the end. Apparently this was his last book (he passed away in 2005), and his first books were better than this. If that's so, I'd start reading his first books!
Rating: ***out of 5
