ICYMI: Daniel Mason's atmospheric, mysterious, languorous story is of a shy piano tuner's trip to Burma to get the piano of an eccentric army surgeon up and working. A good piano tuner must have knowledge not only of his instrument but of “Physics, Philosophy, and Poetics,” so that Edgar, although he never attended university, reached his twentieth birthday with more education than many who had. In 1886 England, middle-aged, shy piano tuner Edgar Drake is asked to do somethin

This is an appealingly cozy and old-fashioned mystery, with the flavors, sights, and sounds of colonial India underlying everything. It's...