Reviews

Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit

Holly Doyle

It’s a miracle that only two people die in Dead Man in the Orchestra Pit by Tom Osborne (Anvil Press), during a weekend in Vancouver when a hotel robbery goes terribly wrong and the thieves get tangled up with Grey Cup rabble-rousers and the backstage crew at a performance of La Traviata. The dead man in the orchestra pit is an unfortunate tuba player who gets crushed to death when the 345-pound producer of the opera topples into the orchestra (a funny scene, especially if you don’t know any tuba players), and we follow the characters as they lurch from pre-game parties in bars full of wannabe cowboys (the Calgary Stampeders are in the game) to the Hyatt Regency, scene of the heist, and then to the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, where upstairs the heroine, Violetta, sings “Oooo OOOOOoooo Ooooolaaa . . .” as she dies of tuberculosis, and downstairs events unfold that demonstrate how a dead man in the orchestra pit can complicate a well-planned heist. The streets of downtown Vancouver have never been this lively—I even laughed when Toronto won the game.

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