Customer Reviews

The Baritone Wore Chiffon (A Liturgical Mystery)

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Mark Schweizer has to win an award someday. I don't what the award might be except he has left me in stitches again. "The Baritone Wore Chiffon" is an even more enraptured, wonderful take on his first book, "The Alto Wore Tweed". How he can make innocent fun of a character with leprosy might have you slapping your leg with laughter...except that the character might not have a leg. I only wish the author could somehow engage George Bush in his next book....I'd buy it in a minute!!

Anyone who's familiar with Episcopal liturgy will laugh at loud at this book...particularly choristers with a sense of humor. If your choir is as much fun as mine, you'll love to share passages of the book with others who rewrite hymn lyrics for jollies or get a chuckle out of the stereotypical "stiffness" of the church and its rituals. The Baritone Wore Tweed is a laugh a minute...and a good mystery, to boot! Enjoy!

I just finished "The Baritone Wore Chiffon" (I bought and happily read "The Alto Wore Tweed" more than a year ago). It was definitely worth the dough.

The best bit in the book is the priceless Children's Moment scene where little scamps totally befuddle a foolish priest. Read the book just for those belly laughs! The murder mystery is complex and engaging (even though I'm not a big circus fan). Without giving anything away, I'm glad that the "obvious" didn't happen, i.e., that the killer wasn't a certain person. As in the first book, slapstick comedy plays its pivotal part in the story, and participant kid Moosey is hilarious... I hope he didn't get in too much trouble from his mom for his creative donkey snack substitutions!

It is a darn good thing that Mark Schweizer is a much better writer than his lead character, Hayden, because much as the latter's wacky similes entertain, *his* mystery (in italics throughout the book) is a bit of a muddle to try to follow, let alone make sense of. His love, Meg, was right to have the seventh graders critique Hayden's manuscript, ha ha.

I just received the third book in the series, "The Tenor Wore Tapshoes," from Amazon and can't wait to crack it.

This series has been one of those 'try on a whim' unexpected gems! I'm not sure how I stumbled upon it, but I took the ninety-nine cent risk and downloaded the first one. I enjoyed it and downloaded this, the second in the series. I was laughing so hard I went ahead and downloaded the rest of the series when I was halfway done.

The Baritone is a relatively slim sized read (close to 3300 Kindle locations--no page equivalents on this e-version...I think probably in the 200 page range). The books poke fun at small town politics, religion, life with a side helping of poking fun at political correctness as well. Familiarity with music is a bonus (I'm sure I've missed a few of the jokes).

As is apparent from the book descriptions above, the basic premise is the main character is a small town police detective, who happens to be independently wealthy, who plays the organ and steers the choir for the Episcopal church, has a strong desire to write like Chandler, and now has some murders to solve.

These are not high suspense and the murderer(s) (no spoiler here) is revealed a little in the 'surprise uncovering' method--the story is told in the first person, but we are not privvy to all the thoughts going on in the main character's head. Nothing overly convoluted or suspenseful--buy oh my, the journey to get to the last page is hysterical. As in Really, Really, Really Funny. As in the aforementioned laughter/tears in a public place.

I strongly suspect not everyone will find this quite as humorous as I do...and as I'm not a true aficionado of this genre perhaps I can't make the most cogent arguments for or against the title. However, as an outsider looking in I can say this was at times witty, mostly just funny, and a very pleasant, light read. If you are a Kindle owner, then perhaps you can download the sample and see if it suits you (the parts in italics are the story-within-the-story that the main character is attempting to write).

My final verdict: Highly Recommended!

JTG

P.S. I read some reference to book order being a little difficult to parse out...here is the order from the author's website:

The Alto Wore Tweed (The Liturgical Mysteries)

The Baritone Wore Chiffon (A Liturgical Mystery)

The Tenor Wore Tapshoes (The Liturgical Mysteries)

The Soprano Wore Falsettos (The Liturgical Mysteries)

The Bass Wore Scales (The Lituirgical Mysteries)

The Mezzo Wore Mink (The Liturgical Mysteries)

The Diva Wore Diamonds (The Liturgical Mysteries)

The Organist Wore Pumps (The Liturgical Mysteries)

Of Mr. Sweizer's 3 books, this is the best. The "real" characters are wonderful (I have MET these people!) and the "fictional" characters are easier to follow than in The Tenor Wore Tapshoes. If the other two are "giggle books," this one is a "guffaw" edition. They were all great and I can't wait to see what the soprano wears!

Be prepared to laugh out loud again. Don't miss THE HORRORS OF ALL HORRORS MOST DISASTRIOUS OF ALL CHILDREN'S SERMONS. Wait till you get to the CLOWN COMMUNION! To put it bluntly Mark's at it again. Will anything about church and worship ever be safe from this MASTER COMEDIAN'S barbed wit. I eagerly await each new episode of this man's skill of making satiric ground meat of all SACRED COWS!

This series is absolutely not for everyone. It's all about the in-jokes and aimed at a specialized audience. I don't get zombies an vampires and I don't expect everyone to get classical and liturgical music and the inner workings of Episcopalian parishes and church politics. If I didn't have a lot a lot of Episcopalian friends and if my own (non-Episcopalian) parish hadn't got its start using the facilities of an Episcopal church, I would have missed a lot. The series is really more ecclesiastical satire than anything else, but I love it.

If you love classical music and you've ever sung in a church choir, you may well enjoy The Liturgical Mysteries.

I enjoyed the second book in this series even more than the first. At times as I read it, I laughed out loud. It was very entertaining, and I look forward to reading the next one.

Personally, I liked this book better than the first. Maybe it was because the story included a trip or two to York Minister, which appealed to the medievalist in me! Realistically, I thought that the mystery included a few more twists & turns than the first book (though not as many laugh-out-loud moments) so it was more intellectually engaging. Hayden is still attempting to channel the ghost of Raymond Chandler with the same brain-aching results as in the first book. He's still running the choir at St. Barnabas and is still coming up with esoteric tidbits about liturgical history and musical history. Last, but not least, he's still dealing with the 'characters' that populate St. Germaine.

This was an enjoyable light read for those who don't want their mysteries too 'cozy' and who enjoy a good dose of humor and subtle satire.

Note on Kindle formatting: Very good to excellent. I did not notice any issues while reading this book.

Continuing in the same execrable manner as *The Alto Wore Tweed,* this book will have you laughing out loud if you are at all familiar with the workings of modern music ministry--or even just a modern parish. Speaking of the new interim pastor, one character tells why the great man himself will be riding a donkey into the church on Palm Sunday: "'Because Emil Barna is the living image of Jesus Christ, head and shepherd of the church to this congregation,' said Marilyn demurely. 'He explained it to me.'"

Of course I am shocked--SHOCKED--by that. I had no idea Mark Schweizer had met my pastor.

The Clown Eucharist is not to be missed. Nor is the FOOSCHWAG. You'll learn what not to feed your donkey. And we should never forget that lepers have feelings....

Most of the quips are fresh and funny: "She had more angles than Pythagoras." But a few zingers are overly snarky: "The door slammed shut quicker than a white man's application to the University of Michigan law school"; "as dead as Connie Chung's career." Some things are better thought but resisted.

Still, the only big problem (a continuing one, it seems) is the number of typos: "assembling our favorite Chandlerism's" and "suppliment." "Tact" instead of "tack" and "complimented" instead of "complemented." And that's just a selection from within a range of about ten pages. Since this is only the second book in this series, perhaps the publisher has already addressed the issue. If not, it should invest in a freelance proofreader or two. They come cheap. I should know. I've been one.