Abracadaver

Sergeant Cribb #3

by Peter Lovesey

A sadistic practical joker is haunting the popular music halls of London, interfering with the actors and interrupting their acts by orchestrating humiliating disasters that take place in view of the audience. A trapeze artist misses her timing when the trapeze ropes are shortened. A comedian who invites the audience to sing along with him finds the words of his song “shamefully” altered. Mustard has been applied to a sword swallower’s blade. A singer’s costume has been rigged. The girl in a magician’s box is trapped. Then the mischief escalates to murder. Or was murder intended all along? That indomitable detective team, Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray of Scotland Yard, must track down the elusive criminal.

Genres: Mystery, Historical, Historical Fiction, Historical Mystery, Fiction, Audiobook, Crime

256 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1972

About the author

Peter Harmer Lovesey, also known by his pen name Peter Lear, was a British writer of historical and contemporary detective novels and short stories. His best-known series characters are Sergeant Cribb, a Victorian-era police detective based in London, and Peter Diamond, a modern-day police detective in Bath. He was also one of the world's leading track and field statisticians.

Reviews

[Chris · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is the 3rd in this historical fiction mystery series that I have read, and they have left me underwhelmed. Sgt Cribb and Constable Thackery investigate a series of accidents in music halls around town. They seek to not only find the perpetrator(s) but if the accidents are connected in some way and motive, of course before an accident leads to death.

This was my little PB to carry around with me. My schedule did not allow for the time to use it as often as usual, but I can also say I was not eager to set aside time for it.

Who has read this series and do they get better?

[Greg · Rating 2 out of 5]

Dame Agatha Christie and Her Peers
BOOK 9
A trip to Victorian London and Music Halls where a glimpse of stocking, a bit of frolicking, is far more shocking than a dead girl murdered on stage.
CAST= 3 stars: Jason Buckmaster..."eloctutionist to Royalty and privileged at that moment to be in the female dressing room...flitted away with the unobtrusiveness of a veteran haunter of dressing rooms." And that's about the last we hear of him. It's always odd when I read an opening chapter and a big deal is made of a character, but that character has little to do with the plot and disappears. That's a lot of wasted space and really good authors in the crime genre know that readers do not want to be confused about who is who early in the book. Lola and her sister Bella - trapeze artists - miss each other in the air, high over the stage, and Lola suffers but lives. A series of music hall accidents have Constable Edward Thackery and Sergeant Cribb of Scotland Yard on the trail of the joker playing tricks in odd accidents. At the Old Bailey prison, Woolston takes care of the bedding and says "one gets 3 grades of temperature-cold, very cold, and who's for skating?" Lovesey does have a light comic touch. Plus, we have an on-stage comedian named Sam Fagan who breaks a "stage-hand's jaw after the curtain went down on his act..." a bit too soon. So much for living in character. A sword-swallower swallows and sword covered in mustard. (Things could have been worse.) My favorite character here is Sir Douglas Butterleigh, who has made his fortune in gin, and provides a home for sickly music hall performers, even the young and beautiful who only need hang around for a week but do so for months under the guidance of the gin-swizzling Mrs. Body, who often has the 'vapours'. (Vapours? I think that is King's English for some kind of fainting spells which are part of seduction schemes. After all, Mrs. Body's bedroom contains a pulley for a gin or two, or a bottle... or maybe some acid-and not the fun 1970s kind that made people think "Bread" was a good pop band but the kind that kills. Yea, I know, I digress...) It's a decent cast but unnecessary appearances are just irritating. There is a dog who likes aniseed stays around...for the aniseed...and in a way saves the day!
ATMOSPHERE-3: Music halls of London stage Many 'gaudy' lyrics that are rather g-rated. Naked ladies (actually with flesh-colored stockings over most of their bodies) swing through the air. Naked male torsos get little attention (well, that is, from the characters in this book.) Scotland Yard and fog and rain are of course expected. But there isn't a single original act on stage. Seems to me the author could have come up with something. This IS fiction after all. When rich patrons pay for special midnight shows, what they get is pretty much the same show that everyone else sees, except maybe a totally naked ankle. Of a woman. I'm just not an ankle kind of person. (And just across the English Channel, during this same period, Paris had their "Grand Guignol" shows with gushing blood and real deaths.)
CRIME 2: A lovely lady is given a drink that will make her disappear. She drinks, there's a curtain, curtain is pulled back, lady has dropped through a trap door onto a mattress, dead. Someone may have put deadly acid in her drink! Or maybe it was that really bad, cheap gin. Or lack of mattress.
Investigation = 2. Cribbs is incessantly shocked at the appearance of a lady in flesh stockings and that joke gets old, fast. He asks lots of questions, but never the right one, like: "Oh, you have access to poison, some is missing, a girl is dead, did you do it?"
SOLUTION=1: All is resolved but the motivation is nonsense. Even Losesey admits it is a stretch. And the murder itself has little to do with the story, overall.
SUMMARY: 2.2. Okay, early Lovesey. This is better as a comic novel than a murder mystery. More muscle men in tights doing muscle man things with Mrs. Body and the trapeze artists with more ladies fainting and the gentry drooling would have made this...Brideshead Revisited 2: Music Halls. And probably more entertaining. But I'll try another Lovesey, as this was an early work by this author.

[Puzzle Doctor · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wanted to like it more than I did, but it takes an age to get going and the remainder isn't that interesting. There are better books in this series. Full review at classicmystery.wordpress.com

[Gohnar23 (hiatus but still reading) · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm,. I truly wonder why everyone else's review is so low. i mean this is the first time i read a book of this book series and i was impressed by the dynamics between the two main characters and how they solve the mystery that surrounds the mysterious murder. The way Cribb and Thackeray interacted and helped each other is entertaining and full of surprises, i loved the villain of this book and how the plot & the writing made it seem like this situation is accidental. I think the reson why people see this book as underwhelming is probably because the first two books are better than this??? So i'll plan to read those two next time but other than that., This is undoubtedly an excellent read for mystery and thriller readers. I'd recommend

[Marfita · Rating 3 out of 5]

At first I felt the same as Thackeray: Where's the body? I do remember reading this yonks ago, probably during my first incarnation as library worker in the 70s. Why is Sgt. Cribb investigating music hall mishaps? As usual, when reading in this series, you get the impression you're learning a lot about the period, in this case, the peculiarities of the English Music Hall. I had noted from past BBC watchings that there seems to be what we would call an Emcee, someone to direct the audience on what was coming up and when to start clapping ... someone with a definite personality of their own but no actual talent, such as Ed Sullivan in the US. This person in the music hall seems to be stationed off to the side. There's a startling description of one of these men, a man almost too heavy to stand up.
It's also interesting to learn that the music halls were famous for the prostitutes that lingered, offering "companionship" to men in the boxes and further "entertainment" for after the show, thus depriving the starving performers of more lucrative employment. Much of the story is seen from the suffering Thackeray's point of view, Lovesey happily torturing the poor man by putting him in uncomfortable clothing and situations (and blaming Cribb for it).
Anyway, Lovesey seems to like writing about upper and middle class women who not only don't submit to Victorian Standards of Behavior, but blatantly violate them and enforce them by turns. In the case of this book, it's Mrs. Body who ensures that her boarders, music hall performers on the skids who are taken in and cared for until they recover ... or escape, behave properly but acts lasciviously herself.
It's rather nice of a wealthy donor to sponsor this home for the aged or down-on-their-luck performers, but is that what is really going on?
And where's the titular cadaver? Now you see her, now you don't!

[Larissa · Rating 2 out of 5]

I have really enjoyed the two previous Lovesey books that I've read—one from the Peter Diamond series (From Cop to Corpse) and one historical title (The False Inspector Dew)—and given that this book has arguably the best title ev-er, I was really looking forward to this book. But having read 3/4 of it, I just can't be bothered to finish it. For one, the murder doesn't happen until almost the last quarter of the book and when it does happen, the victim is a character that we've encountered, but not one that we've learned much about. As a result, her treatment feels cursory and unimportant, rather than a fully-fledged character who we have learned/will learn much about—a person whose life has some kind of real weight and significance.

Secondly, I don't love the relationship between the two police officers—it feels like they may have been better introduced in another installment of the series, but here, Sergeant Cribb feels a bit like a flat Sherlock imitation who spends a lot of time talking down to his lackey, Constable Thackeray, who himself is a bit of prude. They don't feel terribly relateable individually, and they don't have a lot of chemistry together.

Where this book does shine, however, is in creating its backdrop—Lovesey clearly spent an immense amount of time researching the milieu of London music halls and imparts a lot of detail into his story. Apparently, this book was adapted as a PBS Mystery! special and I imagine that it would be a really enjoyable TV program, if only for all the setting detail.

I'm not giving up on Lovesey and his historicals, but I am going to leave this unfinished.

[Brian G · Rating 3 out of 5]

A slight disappointment after the first 2 books in the series.
This follows Sergeant Cribb to the music halls of Victorian London. After a series of accidents to performers, Cribb is on hand to find the culprit before something more serious occurs.
This book is well researched and the writing is good and the level of detail really takes the reader into the theatres and backstage performers. The trouble is that the plot is slow and not involving.
The first half of the book is all set-up with no tension or mystery. Then a murder occurs, it is solved very quickly (50 pages)
Great detail and research but at the expense of a good mystery plot

3 stars

[Gerry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sergeant Cribb and his trusty sidekick Thackeray unravel a music hall mystery that keeps the reader guessing until the final few pages. Colourful imagery of the Victorian Music Hall with the "undressing rooms of shameless beauties" regularly visited by the duo as they attempt to find who is trying to disrupt the entertainment provided to the masses.

[Debby Allen · Rating 2 out of 5]

Meh

[Dennis Raffaelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

Okay, kind of a want to be Agatha Christie.

[Anna · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've read many Peter Lovesey books over the years and for me he rarely disappoints and this was no exception. This was first published in 1972 and reading it nearly fifty years on it doesn't feel dated and I don't think that's solely down to it being historical. I loved the title and the music hall setting. The author doesn't overload the story with historical touches; there's just enough to give a flavour of the period and to tempt interested readers to do their own research if they want to know more. I remember this on television in the 1970s I think. Although the series is called Sergeant Cribb Mysteries, Constable Thackeray seemed to be more centre stage. A good period read. I'd certainly seek out some others from the series.

[Jeff Lewis · Rating 3 out of 5]

Music Halls in London, a beset with a number of accidents dressed up as practical jokes. When Sergeant Cribb believes a sword swallower is has been wrongfully jailed he and Constable Thackery visit the underbelly of Victorian theatre which includes secret late night risque shows for the rich. One the people they talk is Lola Pinkus, who with her sister Bella perform a trapeze act, is murdered they have dig deeper. The weakest of the first three Cribb books and possibly not helped by the limitations of the Music Hall which I have never found interesting. Not a bad book but it just doesn't hold the interest enough for me to actually care.

[Varad · Rating 2 out of 5]

I'm normally a fan of Lovesey's books, but this one just didn't engage me. Whether it was the setting, the characters, the story, or some combination of one or more of those, this one was a bit of a chore.

Sgt. Cribb and his constable, Thackeray, are called upon to investigate a series of accidents involving performers in London's music halls. Eventually it emerges that the entertainers are having their acts sabotaged so they will be forced into quasi-retirement from which their services can be obtained on the cheap for a series of unadvertised performances featuring more scandalous entertainment on the bill. Then one of the artistes turns up dead.

Lovesey clearly did a lot of homework into the Victorian theater, and his ear for dialogue is as strong as ever. But for a book about entertainers it should've been, I thought, more entertaining. There is one amusing character, a retired major now working as a private investigator whose services have been retained by the proprietors of a theater worried about what the accidents will do to their bottom line. He turns up in various disguises and situations and adds a note of jollity whenever he's on the page. But his appearances sometimes don't occur for several dozen pages at a time, and then the pace slows down.

All the elements are there. But sometimes even the best craftsman can't make them combine into a whole, and that's the case here.

Wednesday 8/11/21

[Jill · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having read the first two books in this series, I found this to be a bit of a disappointment. I liked some of the humour, and the world of the Victorian Music Halls seemed to have been well-researched, but I as captivated by the plot as I had been with the other books. The plot was easy to see through, and the ending was as if it had been thrown in to liven things up. I shall read the next in the series and hope that this one was just a hiccup in the author's writing.

[Giancarlo Marquez · Rating 3 out of 5]

Una novela detectivesca bastante divertida en la que el autor consiguió mantener mi interés con muchísimo diálogo y poco movimiento.

Tristemente, por más que me entretuvo, el misterio no me pareció de lo mejor y la conclusión fue decepcionante. Lo que quiero decir es que sentí que las cosas realmente no se movían o lo hacían tan rápido que no me percataba, dándome un final poco interesante.

Eso sí, reitero que no me aburrí en ningún momentos gracias a nuestros protagonistas.

[Nancy H · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an older book, but is a really good mystery set among the music hall venues in London. Sergeant Cribb and his constable Thackeray investigate a series of seemingly random accidents in the theater. Of course, the accidents are planned and eventually used as a murder weapon, so Cribb and Thackeray must figure out who is committing the hard-to-solve accidents/murder.

[Tria · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not Lovesey's best mystery novel, but some excellent character-building & entertaining humour. 3 stars. Different print edition to the default for the Android app (it's frankly infuriating that you can't choose a specific edition in the app!).

[Paul Watson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Another rollicking romp through Victorian England.
Intriguing plotline, but not as solid as the previous two books.
I love the attention to Victoria detail and language used - not a 5 star book but enjoyable nonetheless.

[Matthew Hardy · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's a bit like a less good version of an Agatha Christie story. Still readable enough, and gets more exciting in the later third of the book after a rather dull start, and it's a nice little 'time capsule' of the era it was written in. But overall nothing to write home about.

[Russell Atwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

cribb is a treat, tgis early Lovesey is a treat. by play with Thackeray and mysic hall hijinks the highlughts. beautifully written.

[Deborah James · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was such a disappointing read after the blurb promised so much! Find out why on my full review on my blog -> http://bookworminglife.com/abracadaver/

[Amy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Good story about a series of suspicious accidents in the music halls. Set in the turn of the century 1900s, it was very atmospheric of the era.

[Roger Woods · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amusing mystery set in the music hall era.

[Sarah G · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rounded up for historical theater backdrop for the story.

[Maria McGrath · Rating 3 out of 5]

Definitely a glimpse into a bygone era, written with a Wodehouse-like tone.

[Crash Solo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A solid addition to the Inspector Cribb series, with a focus on music hall variety shows in Victorian London. There’s a through line of humor that adds to the enjoyment.

[Nancy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A cosy Victorian London mystery 🔎

I’ve read another one in the series and enjoyed it and this was no different. This series always follows the same detectives Sergeant Cribb and constable Thackeray and I love their partnerships! There’s always a new theme with the mystery, this one follows accidents at a music hall and the reveal is always done in such a satisfying way where everything just falls into place!

It’s a shorter read with interesting characters and fun entertainment 📚

[Bonnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

A clever play on word is the title for this third book in the Sergeant Gribb series by Peter Lovesey. Partnered again with Constable Thackeray from the Yard, this time the crime to investigate is a series of mishaps occurring on stage in Victorian London music halls;
mishaps of a kind that could ruin a performer's career.


After a second mishap occurs when a trained dog in an act is replaced with one prone to biting, Gribbs and Thackeray are called in. A sadistic practical joker is haunting the popular music halls of London, interfering with the actors and interrupting their acts by orchestrating humiliating disasters that take place in view of the audience. A trapeze artist misses her timing when the trapeze ropes are shortened. A comedian who invites the audience to sing along with him finds the words of his song “shamefully” altered. Mustard has been applied to a sword swallower’s blade. A singer’s costume has been rigged. The girl in a magician’s box is trapped. Then the mischief escalates to murder. Or was murder intended all along? That indomitable detective team, Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray of Scotland Yard, must track down the elusive criminal.

Lovesey has thoroughly researched Victorian London and describes the inner workings of many popular clubs of the times. He is meticulous in describing clothing worn, attitudes exhibited, class distinctions made until the readers sense the gas-lit halls were mediocre performances are playing out before raucous crowds.

Thackeray is a very tall, substantially built man with side whiskers who plays the foil to Gribbs distinguished character. When he is required to take part in the backstage workings as a scene-remover, Lovesey tickles our funny bone with Thackeray's clumsiness and puritanical outrage of the skimpy costumes worn by the female chorus line.

The final act for the evening was a sword-swallower who worked with a beautiful, blond assistant named Miss Lola, who is supposed to drink a magical potion and disappear. The drum roll began, the sword-swallower made movements with his black cloak, while Lola held the glass high and drank. She screamed and dropped through the hidden trap door only to reappear high in the gallery with her spangles and nothing else.
What the audience didn't realize was that Lola had a twin sister Bella, now accepting praise. When the trap door was opened, Lola lay on the mattress, dead.

Now, the case Gribbs and Thackeray are investigating is murder. Lola had drunk water laced with Prussic acid. As Gribbs tells Thackeray, "Just about the deadliest known." Peter Lovesey must have a fascination with poison as it uses it in many of his novels to dispatch characters.

At this point, Jowett, Gribbs commanding officer, cautions against upsetting Mr. Plunkett, who owns the Paragon theatre, and concentrate on Philbeach House, a refuge for music hall actors out of work.
Gribbs and Thackeray deduce that Members of Parliament might be involved in the Paragon viewing scantily clad chorus girls and a quietus must be placed on any speculation of impropriety.

When a bottle Of Prussic acid is found at Philbeach House, Gribbs suspects the owner of the house, Mrs. Body, of poisoning Lola out of jealousy. When Gribbs is informed that Mrs. Body is indisposed with vapors, he discloses that another girl has gone missing none other than the daughter of Mr. Plunkett. A ransom note was received and plans made to rescue Ellen. The surprising end is pure Peter Lovesey.

[Suspense Magazine · Rating 3 out of 5]

It’s the late 19th century in London as the events of “Abracadaver” begin to unfold. We open on two sisters’ argument over who’s to blame for a trapeze act gone wrong, only to find their act had been sabotaged through no fault of either sister. It is soon discovered that this is not the only act of the old music halls that has succumbed to sabotage, there seems to be a dark practical joker on the loose, and his theatrics seem to know no bounds. After one of the joker’s antics proves fatal, Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray of Scotland Yard are called in to catch the now murderous and always elusive villain.
Through excellent descriptions and detail, this fast paced, fun, and intriguing novel takes the reader straight back to London’s streets and music halls of the late 1800’s. Follow Sergeant Cribb and Constable Thackeray as they attempt to solve another great Victorian-era mystery.

[Adelaide Blair · Rating 3 out of 5]

Like all of Lovesey's Cribb and Thackeray novels, this book is pure fun. This time around, our Scotland Yard detectives are after a prankster who is targeting performers in 19th century music halls. Will they find their man? And will the pranks escalate to MURDER?