Overview

Cassandra Reilly travels to Venice to solve the mystery of a missing bassoon, and lands in the midst of an international cast of characters who all have something to hide

At the Venice-based symposium on women musicians of Vivaldi’s time, an instrument has gone missing: an antique bassoon, an invaluable family heirloom—and bassoonist Nicky Gibbons stands accused of the theft. Determined to clear her name, Nicky calls Cassandra Reilly—lesbian translator and part-time sleuth extraordinaire—and summons her to the City of Water. Fifteen scholars and musicians are attending the symposium, and each has a multitude of quirks and secrets—as well as motive to steal the bassoon. As Cassandra investigates, she immerses herself in the world of Baroque music, the tangle of personal intrigues at the symposium, and a second mystery involving the orphaned bassoonists of eighteenth-century Venice.

Wry, intelligent, and atmospheric, The Case of the Orphaned Bassoonists is the fourth and final book in the Cassandra Reilly Mystery series, which begins with Gaudí Afternoon, Trouble in Transylvania, and The Death of a Much-Travelled Woman.

About Barbara Wilson

Barbara Wilson is the pen name of Barbara Sjoholm, an LGBTQ writer and a translator from Norwegian and Danish. Her mysteries, written under the name Barbara Wilson, include two series, one with printer Pam Nilsen (Murder in the Collective) and one with translator-sleuth Cassandra Reilly. Her mysteries include the Lambda-award-winning Gaudi Afternoon, made into a film of the same name, and Not the Real Jupiter. She was a co-founder of Seal Press and in 2020 received the annual Trailblazer Award from the Golden Crown Literary Society for her contributions to lesbian literature. Her books have been published in England and translated into Spanish, Finnish, German, and Japanese.