Dead on Cue (A Nick Lawrence Mystery)
Showy Hollywood actor Gerry Harlington, star of the Wasp Man movies, has recently settled in the village of Lakehurst in Sussex. Hoping to ingratiate himself with the locals, he offers to direct the son et lumiere show, which celebrates the area’s eleventh-century Fulke Castle. But when he performs a hip-hop dance in the midst of an Elizabethan fair at dress rehearsal, he’s clearly gone too far, and cast members revolt. So when Harlington is found dead after the first performance, there are plenty of suspects, including the victim’s wife, who had decided to divorce him. Compounding matters is the death of a young woman who apparently witnessed Harlington’s murder. In the second Reverend Nick Lawrence mystery, after The Mills of God (2010), the vicar, who shares his vicarage with a ghost and a cat, helps DI Dominic Tennant find the murderer. The presence of the over-the-top Hollywood figure adds a campy element, but this settles down to a nice cozy with sympathetic characters. A good choice for village-crime fans. --Michele Leber