Christmas Murder at the Pantomime and Other Curtain Call Calamities

A Cozy Victorian Mystery of Love and Murder

If anyone insists Christmas at Drury Lane is wholesome, do not look above the scenery.

Miss Sybil Merriweather, wardrobe mistress and sworn enemy of insolent seams, can mend a sagging stocking in three stitches and silence a chorus with one look. She cannot, however, persuade the theatre’s fake snow to stay in its sack, or its leading man’s waistcoat buttons to stop tattling. “Buttons are honest creatures. They told the truth when men did not.” The season, naturally, takes that as a challenge.

Enter Gideon Ashe of the Society for the Improvement of Public Morals, armed with pamphlets, threats, and the smug certainty that ankles topple empires. He makes precisely one grand inspection before he is found in the loft beneath a drift of shredded playbills, stiff collar askew, and a dark mark at his throat, which is murder without gore and excellent timing for nobody.

To keep the theatre open, Sybil must work with Mr Felix Sedgewick, examiner for the Lord Chamberlain and rumoured to enjoy closing theatres. Who had access to the loft, who pulled the cord, and is Felix investigating the death, or Sybil?

A cozy Victorian whodunit of village scandal in a city theatre, with murder, manners, and a closed-door slow burn that lands in a happy-for-now curtain call.