[2] In 1986 the novel was adapted into a play which was staged in New York City by Tony Tanner.

It shifted the location from Oxford to Cambridge and changed the opera being performed to Rossini's The Barber of Seville.

[3] Fen becomes dragged into the complexities rivalries of an opera company who are to perform the Wagner's The Mastersingers of Nuremberg for the first time in Britain since the Second World War.

When one of the singers, widely loathed by the rest of the company, is found hanging dead in his dressing room Fen becomes the driving force behind the investigation.

A second murder threatens to derail the opening night, but Fen has at last cracked the case.