MCBRIDE 10: REQUIEM

Ex-cop McBride’s love of music draws him in to a classically composed piece of murder.

Classical violinist Ava Fletcher (Josie Davis, CSI: Miami) is the twenty-five-year-old first-chair diva of the LA Symphony. A darling of the critics, adored by the public, and a Sunday Arts Section cover girl, she has everything a budding young talent could ask for. So what’s a virtuoso like Ava doing with an enemy? That’s what McBride (Emmy winner John Larroquette, The John Larroquette Show), one her biggest fans, asks when the sweetheart of the strings is found dead in her dressing room only minutes before curtain with blood on her multi-million-dollar Stradivarius. The high-profile crime is made all the more so given that her father is a powerful senator who wants the case closed and someone arrested ASAP—preferably his daughter’s fiancée, whom the senator sees as strictly second-rate.

But McBride isn’t convinced of Fletcher’s guilt even if his relationship with Ava was on the rocks. Besides, they already have enough suspects to fill an orchestra pit, including Ava’s deeply jealous rival Felicia Hart (Amanda Foreman, Alias); Carrie Deluca (Karis Campbell, CSI) , the crafty stage manager who discovered the body; Hudson Lucas (Andy Umberger, Boston Legal), a wealthy—and married—patron of the arts on intimate terms with the victim, not to mention Hudson’s wife. The more McBride learns about Ava the more he begins to suspect that everyone had a perfectly good motive—and that her music made someone’s heart grow colder.

A case tailor-made for one of the brightest and most laid-back sleuths on the block.