Stage Fright
A Cambridge Mystery
-
-
1.0 • 1 Rating
-
-
- $11.99
-
- $11.99
Publisher Description
During her maternity leave, Cambridge academic Cassandra James gets involved in a production of East Lynne. There is as much drama behind the scenes as there is on stage. The director is desperate to revive his flagging career. The maker of a fly-on-the-wall documentary is equally desperate to launch his.
The crisis is reached when the leading lady disappears before the first night. Cassandra thinks it is more than stage fright, for Melissa has left six-month-old Agnes behind. Cassandra’s struggles to uncover the truth lead her deeper and deeper in a maze of illusion and deceit. Someone close at hand is not what they seem. Cassandra and her baby are in grave danger . . .
"Poulson deftly keeps up the tension while manipulating the roles characters play on and off the stage: an academic cozy with attitude." - Kirkus Reviews
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Heavy with allusions to Thomas Wolfe, Lewis Carroll, Nietzsche, Kafka and other literary giants, British author Poulson's absorbing second Cambridge mystery (after 2004's Murder Is Academic) concerns Professor Cassandra James's efforts to cope with single motherhood while making a trouble-ridden dramatic debut at the Everyman Theatre. She has rewritten Mrs. Henry Wood's 1860s novel East Lynne as a play, and during rehearsals must deal with a ghostly apparition in the gallery, followed by the abrupt disappearance of her close friend and leading lady, Melissa Meadow. Cass comments that "life does seem to be mirroring art in a rather disturbing way" when an anonymous letter quoting a Byron love poem offers the only clue to Melissa's whereabouts. Much of the story concerns such maternal challenges as breast-feeding, squalling babies in "nappies" and postpartum depression, yet somehow Cass finds time to break into her missing friend's empty house and eventually track down both her own and Melissa's abusive ex-spouses and other lovers. Skillful blendings of reality with Tarot card prophesies and dream visions lead to a stunning resolution.
