A Knife at the Opera

NO REST FOR THE WICKED...

Backstage at the Tunbridge Wells girls' school production of The Beggar's Opera, all was bedlam. Miss Claire "Sugar Plum" Fairlie, the English teacher, was nowhere to be found, and her big number was coming up. It wasn't until after the show--saved by a student's smashing last-minute performance--that the pretty and ambitious teacher was located in the Domestic Science room. A knife had been plunged with some force into her back, and death had been mercifully swift.

Perhaps the murderer did not know that the audience included Superintendent R.D. Bone, proud father of one of the chorus--or perhaps the culprit was too brazen to care. From spurned lovers to jealous colleagues to cast-off teacher's pets, Bone must make his careful way through a maze of suspects, aware that nothing is more dangerous than a killer who has already tasted blood...