Murder, Misprints, and Other Drury Lane Disasters

A Cozy Regency Mystery of Love and Murder

De: Marisa Paxon

Narrado por: Virtual Voice

I have already dragged a full evening of Drury Lane vanity, hot footlights, and damp wool through your the entire novel without so much as a thank you; now they have decided I must also persuade strangers to volunteer for it. Marvellous. I do adore unpaid encores.

Welcome to Regency London, where a government censor is found neatly flattened by a fallen backdrop during the interval of a fashionable new comedy. The audience is still demanding laughter, the investors are still demanding profit, and Miss Eliza March is still trying to behave like a quiet, respectable ward in Lady Hartley’s box, despite having the terrible habit of noticing everything. Unfortunately for her nerves and everyone else’s alibis, she is the one who discovers Mr Swithin in the property room, still clutching the script he came to condemn.

Naturally, the one man capable of keeping the theatre from erupting into a riot is also the one least suited to quiet discretion: Mr Nathaniel Quill, Drury Lane’s celebrated comic actor and part-owner, who can charm a house into applause while staring at a frayed rope and wondering who decided murder was a tasteful addition to the evening’s programme. Add Bow Street’s Mr Cobb (a professional damp cloth applied to society’s theatrics), a playwright with too much at stake, stagehands with too much access, and a building stuffed with people who would cheerfully trade truth for a clean scandal, and I am left to sweep up motives like sawdust.

Eliza has very little to lose, except her precarious protection, her father’s battered legacy, and the right to keep her head down in peace. Quill has rather more: his theatre, his livelihood, and the small inconvenience of being blamed for whatever happens in a building he cannot quite stop loving. If you enjoy watching sensible people forced into public chaos, you are in for a treat.

Perfect for readers who want a witty, clue-rich Regency murder mystery in a bustling theatre setting, with sharp banter, backstage intrigue, and a very low-heat, closed-door romantic thread that ends on a hopeful HFN. The violence is non-gory, the questions are pointed, and the solution is the sort that snaps into place with irritating logic once you finally stop trusting the wrong performance.

Now, if you are going to step into Drury Lane, do it properly. Click Look Inside and let us get on with it.