"New Quarter Note Tales" presents a collection of three new novellas featuring Axel Crochet, peripatetic professor of music history. "A Faculty Affair"-As the new professor of musicology at Rochambeau's Fleur de Lis University, Axel stumbles upon a colossal cover-up when he discovers a letter suggesting that the efforts of his predecessor to move the School of Music from the Faculty of Arts to the Faculty of Letters may have had fatal consequences. "The Music Man Mystery"-As director of a production of The Music Man in Rochambeau, Quebec, Axel has to make changes when the leading man dies a few days before the performance. Although the police rule it an accident, cast members mutter about suicide. Then, some information suddenly appears that makes murder seem much more likely.
"Fire and Ice"-When fire breaks out at the tiny Galton School, claiming the life of one of its students, suspicion falls on a known pyromaniac. Then, the bursar breaks her neck on the icy front steps. Axel, the school's music director, discovers financial records-stuffed inside a hymnal and concealed in the chapel piano-indicating that these accidents may have been murder."