A Midsummer Night's Scream: A Jane Jeffry Mystery - Couverture rigide

All the world's a stage in this delightful new whodunit from the incomparable Jill Churchill -- as suburban mom and sometime sleuth Jane Jeffry and best friend Shelley Nowack try to bring the curtain down on a killer. ...

Jane Jeffry has a new hobby: the stage, specifically a rundown theater that close pal Shelley and her husband have donated to a local college drama department. Students from the nearby college are in rehearsal there for a never-before-produced "magnum opus" written by the company's director, a surefire bomb-in-the-making distinctly lacking in style, wit, and substance. Though Jane's connection is culinary -- helping Shelley handle caterers who will be feeding the actors -- she's soon drawn deeper into the drama than she ever hoped or anticipated.

What a scene it is, with petty offstage feuds and jealousies, ego trips, and power struggles between the clueless director-author and his dubiously talent ed cast. Even the presence of two aging professional thespians -- a lecherous old boozer and his genteel, seriously gifted wife -- does nothing to stabilize a volatile situation. And the plot takes a decidedly darker turn when a particularly rebellious young performer exits stage left -- permanently -- courtesy of a head-bashing killer.

Hark! It's murder, which means it's a cue for Detective Mel VanDyne, Jane's longtime leading man, to get into the act. But Jane and Shelley have their own roles to play in this twisted true-life theatrical, where each member of the dramatis personae has a makeup case full of secrets, masks, and motives. And they'll have to act fast to uncover the villain of the piece before the denouement turns into a real, corpse-strewn, Shakespearean-style tragedy!

Jill Churchill has won the Agatha and Macavity Mystery Readers awards and was nominated for an Anthony Award for her bestselling Jane Jeffry series. She is also the author of the highly acclaimed Grace and Favor mysteries and lives in the Midwest.