Overview

Death stalks a production of Amadeus in this second outing for Inspector Barnaby and Midsomer Murders. Too many notes, Mr. Mozart! Actors do love their dramas, and the members of the Causton Amateur Dramatic Society are no exception. Passionate love scenes, fits of ego, jealous rages, operatic reconciliations...put together, they're better than a paycheck, which is a good thing, because no one in this staging of Amadeus is getting one. However, even the most theatrically minded have to admit that murdering the leading man in full view of the audience is a bit over the top. Luckily, Inspector Barnaby is in that audience, and while he may lack certain skills as a theater critic, he's just the man to catch a killer. With so many dramas playing out, there's no shortage of motives or suspects, including secret lovers and jealous understudies galore. Inspector Barnaby is in his element, and so is Caroline Graham, a former actress, who tweaks her collection of community-theater artistes and small-town drama queens with merciless delight. The reader's only regret will be that, eventually, the curtain must come down on the final page.

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9781631943393

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Reviews

""A host of wonderful characters"" --Gloucestershire Echo ""A most enjoyable read, right down to the classic gathering of all the suspects, at which the killer and the motive are revealed"" --Publishers Weekly ""Entertaining...imbued with wit and brio"" --Baltimore Sun ""Filled with delicious characters"" --Atlanta Journal ""Graham surely knows her way around the village mystery, touching on all its earmarks: the gossip, the small-mindedness, the noses in everybody's business. And her theatrics ring true."" --Kirkus ""Lots of excellent character sketches, and the dialogue is lively and convincing"" --The Independent ""Superlative...a novel of remarkable depth"" --Jackson Clarion-Ledger

Author Information

Caroline Graham was born in Warwickshire, UK, on July 17, 1931. Graham received a degree in theater writing from the University of Birmingham, but she held a number of jobs before settling on writing. She attended ballet school in Paris, ran a marriage bureau, worked in a factory, served in the Royal Navy, and worked as an actress and radio broadcaster, among other things. After attempting a variety of genres, including writing for the long-running British series Crossroads, Graham wrote the first Barnaby novel, The Killings at Badger's Drift, which was an instant hit and was eventually selected by the Crime Writers' Association as one of the hundred best crime novels of all time. Starting in 1997, the Barnaby books were adapted into the immensely successful television series Midsomer Murders; the author herself has cameos in some early episodes, and it's still running now! Graham lives in Suffolk, England.

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