Overture to Death is a detective novel by Ngaio Marsh

Ngaio Marsh

Dame Ngaio Marsh DBE , born Edith Ngaio Marsh, was a New Zealand crime writer and theatre director. There is some uncertainty over her birth date as her father neglected to register her birth until 1900...

; it is the eighth novel to feature Roderick Alleyn

Roderick Alleyn

Roderick Alleyn is a fictional character who first appeared in 1934. He is the policeman hero of the 32 detective novels of Ngaio Marsh. Marsh and her gentleman detective belong firmly in the Golden Age of Detective Fiction, although the last Alleyn novel, Light Thickens, was published as late as...

, and was first published in 1939. The plot concerns a murder during a village theatrical performance; Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Rachmaninoff

Sergei Vasilievich Rachmaninoff was a Russian composer, pianist, and conductor. Rachmaninoff is widely considered one of the finest pianists of his day and, as a composer, one of the last great representatives of Romanticism in Russian classical music...

's Prelude in C-sharp minor

Prelude in C-sharp minor (Rachmaninoff)

Prelude in C-sharp minor , Op. 3, No. 2, is one of Sergei Rachmaninoff's most famous compositions. It is a ternary prelude in C-sharp minor, 62 measures long, and part of a set of five pieces entitled Morceaux de Fantaisie....

 plays a prominent part in the story. So does a "Venetian Suite" by Ethelbert Nevin. The murder weapon is a pistol hidden in a piano.