Once again Axel Crochet, bearded musicologist-at-large, stumbles into murderous intrigue amid church politics and academic amphigory, where tempers run so high because the stakes are so low.
In "Cat's Paw," Axel is convinced by a colleague at Pittsburgh's Monongahela University to investigate the sudden death of the university organist, putting both his academic position and his life in jeopardy. In "The Carcassonne Codex," Axel attends a professional meeting in Minneapolis. He soon finds himself thrust in the middle of a murderous plot after he is handed a pill bottle by a hotel housemaid and becomes suspicious about the death of a noted medievalist. In "If Thine Eye Offend Thee," Axel begins a new position as music director at a wealthy church where abuses by the rector have alienated the congregation and evoked calls for his removal. Axel encounters a warm welcome from the choir, but hostility from the sinister senior warden.
In this trilogy of murder mysteries, a curious musicologist with a propensity for attracting mayhem must overcome professional jealousies, evil plots and bizarre chains of events.