Murder Off Stage

Book excerpt: Welcome to Broadway - and to an unthinkable crime! Former theatre starlet turned amateur sleuth Jessie Beckett gets mixed up in murder when an on-stage shooting turns all too real. New York, 1926. It's not like Jessie Beckett goes around looking for murders to solve, but the vaudeville star turned movie script girl has a natural talent for it. After a lifetime on stage, she's sensitive to details that other people miss. So when leading theater star Allen Crenshaw is shot live on stage during a performance of hit Broadway show Rules of Engagement - a horrified Jessie watching from the second row - she knows she has to act fast before Allen's co-star, the beautiful Norah Rose, goes down for murder. After all, it was Norah who fired the fateful bullet . . . even if the shooting was all part of the show. Jessie investigates those closest to Allen - the presence of her theater companion, the superstar Adele Astaire, opening doors wherever they go - and finds only enemies. With the suspects for the disliked actor so numerous, can she uncover the truth in time to save Norah - or will the killer silence her too? Packed with real-life stars of the stage and screen, this page-turning romp through the boards and backstreets of Broadway is a perfect pick for readers who enjoy Jazz Age mysteries with intrepid female sleuths.