Music to Die For by Radine Trees Nehring

First published: Wichita, Kans.: St. Kitts Press, 2003

Genre(s): Novel

Subgenre(s): Mystery and detective fiction

Core issue(s): Faith; friendship; responsibility; trust in God

Principal characters

• Carrie McCrite, a widow, tourist station manager, and sometime amateur sleuth
• Henry King, a retired Kansas City police detective and Carrie’s friend
• Tracy Teal, a famous young country music star
• Chase Mason, Tracy’s husband, an equally famous country musician and guitarist
• Dulcey Mason, Tracy and Chase’s four-year-old daughter
• “Mad Margaret” Culpeper, the ancient matriarch of an Ozark hill family
• Micah,
• Zephaniah,
• Habakkuk, and
• Nahum, Margaret’s sons
• Beth, Carrie’s friend
• Ben Yokum, a backstage hand at Ozark Folk Center
• Bobby Lee Logan, a blacksmith, musician, and childhood friend of Tracy
• Farel Teal, a murder victim, Tracy’s cousin

Overview

At the beginning of Music to Die For, upon settling in for her vacation at the Ozark Folk Center, Carrie McCrite goes walking in the woods. Besides birds and spring wildflowers, she notices a faint, haunting melody. A few moments later, an eccentric old woman walks past, muttering, “The gowerow has taken the child.” Carrie puzzles over this but then shrugs and goes in to dinner. There, her friend Beth asks for her help in finding the star performers, country musicians Tracy Teal and her husband, Chase Mason, who have not yet appeared. Carrie goes out to look. Behind a door, she overhears the two stars talking with Chase’s mother, Brigid, about Tracy and Chase’s daughter Dulcey’s having been kidnapped. She introduces herself and takes them back to the banquet, where they perform. However, they leave immediately afterward.

Carrie follows, walking out into the craft shop area. There, she hears muffled gasps coming from the dressmaker’s shop. She opens the door and comes across Tracy, crying in the dark. When Carrie lights a candle, she sees the body of Farel Teal, Tracy’s cousin, on the floor. He has been stabbed in the chest, and a note is in his hand, mentioning a blue birdhouse and Dulcey.

Tracy and Chase do not want to call the police yet, for fear of prompting harm to their daughter. It strikes Carrie that both are acting a bit strangely, however, and she leaves to call the sheriff’s office about the body. Carrie wishes that Henry King, a retired Kansas City police detective, were there to offer help and advice. Since he is not, it falls to her to help the obviously shaken couple. She rides with them to Farel’s cabin. No one is there. As they leave, a figure dashes into the house. A moment later, the place goes up in flames. Tracy collapses, and Carrie tries to comfort her on the drive back to the park.

The next morning, Carrie pokes around the Folk Center grounds, soliciting background information on the Masons’ career and the local scene. At noon, much to her relief, Henry arrives. Carrie briefs him on the situation. Ruefully, they decide that sleuthing must take precedence over their original plan to attend workshops on Ozark folk crafts. Henry concurs with Carrie’s plan to find and query Margaret Culpeper, the old woman whom Carrie heard muttering on the day of her arrival. They leave to visit her; perhaps her strange words are more than coincidental.

Carrie and Henry find Margaret in a clearing as picturesque and junky as any Ozark travel photo. Warming to Carrie’s own (if exaggerated) Culpeper connections, Margaret invites them into one of the surrounding weathered shacks. As long as her shotgun-toting son Micah is present, Margaret chatters inconsequential family gossip. Once Micah disappears, she answers Carrie’s question about the gowerow—a folk monster—with a surprise revelation. Her boys are holding Dulcey. She assures Carrie and Henry that they will not hurt the child; they just want the ransom. When she learns who Dulcey is—and recognizes her as her granddaughter—she offers more help. She dare not counter her “boys” openly, she says, but that evening she will be babysitting Dulcey. She can then take the child down the mountain to her son Nahum’s house. He will keep her secret, and Carrie and Henry can pick her up there.

Carrie and Henry leave, amazed to have solved the kidnapping so easily. Unfortunately, the plan to recover Dulcey encounters some hitches. When Carrie approaches the house, she is grabbed and bound, then dumped on the floor next to a similarly trussed Tracy, who had also come looking for her daughter. Two of Margaret’s sons, Habakkuk and Zephaniah (Hab and Zeph), have decided that Tracy will make another ransomable hostage. Carrie, however, fears that she may be disposable. She tries to comfort herself by reciting Psalms. Eventually she and Tracy are moved. Tracy wakes and tells Carrie about her marriage problems, which led indirectly to this crisis. Carrie tells her not to worry about Dulcey; her daughter is safe. Carrie assumes that Henry went up the path and took Dulcey from Margaret, since Nahum was not at home.

Margaret appears. With the excuse of helping the captives to the bathroom, she confirms Carrie’s news about Dulcey, then unties both women and urges them to flee. Before they can, Hab bursts in with his gun. A shot rings out and Hab falls to the floor, injured. Ben Yokum, a stagehand at Ozark Folk Center, climbs in the window. Henry and the sheriff follow, coming down the hall. It turns out that the sheriff has long suspected Hab and Zeph of growing marijuana.

In the aftermath, all the puzzles are solved. Farel Teal did originally kidnap Dulcey, albeit with Tracy’s cooperation, in revenge for a song that Chase stole from him and Tracy. Ben Yokum stabbed Farel; he saw Tracy fighting with him and concluded she was in danger. Bobby Lee Logan (a blacksmith, musician, and childhood friend of Tracy) set the fire at Farel’s house to cover up Farel’s involvement with the Culpepers’ drug business. Chase and Tracy, whose marriage had always been shaky, are reconciled.

Christian Themes

Music to Die For is representative of mystery and detective genre fiction that has been written specifically for a Christian audience. Some features typical of Christian (sometimes more broadly identified as inspirational) genre fiction are that it avoids depiction of certain behaviors on the part of the main characters (such as drinking, cursing, and nonmarital sex) and that it presents a “faith journey” on the part of a protagonist. Both of these criteria are met by Music to Die For. The novel is the second of a series that features Carrie McCrite and Henry King as amateur sleuths, and its author, Radine Trees Nehring, won the 1998 Christian Writer of the Year Award, presented by the American Christian Writers.

Specific Christian themes are subtle but definitely present. While the plot contains no overtly “churchy” elements—in fact, all readers can enjoy it simply as a mystery without considering its spiritual themes—Carrie McCrite nevertheless is a woman of indelible faith. Her faith in God allows her to enter dangerous situations without disabling fear. When facing the unknown, she automatically says a silent prayer. Carrie knows her Bible and, when someone needs comforting, often recalls an appropriate Psalm or other passage to share with them.

Accompanying her faith is Carrie’s strong sense of responsibility. When finding herself in a dangerous situation, she has no doubt that her responsibility is to do whatever it takes to untangle the trouble and resolve the situation fairly. She is willing, even eager, to learn and try new activities, from herbal cultivation to the details of good detective practice, despite her grandmotherly demeanor and her past life as a dependent wife. Part of her openness to new experiences and knowledge stems from her sheer curiosity and the lure of a challenge, but she also wants to be prepared to face the responsibilities that descend upon her regularly.

Like almost all mystery novels, Music to Die For is concerned with restoring moral order and bringing wrongdoers to justice. However, there is another dimension of theme also, the importance of human connections. Friendships are important in Carrie’s world. Without her network of friends, living in an isolated clearing in the Ozarks as she does would be very lonely, even frightening. Family is important too, and even if the Culpeper family is eccentric, there is no doubt of Margaret’s joy when she discovers her lost granddaughter. Nor is there a doubt of Tracy’s happiness upon discovering that her long-lost biological father is Ben Yokum. Likewise, Tracy is willing to give her marriage another try, even after she realizes that Chase originally married her only to lay claim to her trademark song. As for Chase, the sobering experience of almost losing Tracy and Dulcey has begun to temper his arrogance and impatience by the story’s end. Concern for these human connections is not uniquely Christian, but the author’s, and the characters’, Christian faith strengthens their importance here.

Sources for Further Study

Nehring, Radine Trees. Radine’s Books. http://www.radinesbooks.com. The author’s Web site lists her other books and writings.

Nehring, Radine Trees. A Valley to Die For. Wichita, Kans.: St. Kitts Press, 2002. First of Nehring’s series of “. . . to Die For” mysteries, in which Carrie moves to Arkansas, meets Henry, and solves the murder of a friend.

“Radine Trees Nehring.” Tulsa World, May 26, 2002, p. 5. Nehring tells the story of her road to becoming a mystery writer.