It's opening night of a brand-new mystery play, but just as the killer is about to be revealed, the body of the play's director falls onstage instead. In that moment, the theater becomes an active crime scene, and everyone from cast to crew to even the audience becomes a suspect. But how is the intrepid detective supposed to find the killer when everyone and their mother (literally) has a motive to want the demanding director gone? This Murder Was Staged is a fast-paced, backstabbing, backstage comedy from two of the writers of The Alibis and Rogues' Gallery. Mystery Comedy Full-length. 100-120 minutes. 8-25 actors

Individuals who perpetrate murder sometimes pose or reposition victims, weapons, and evidence to make it look like events happened in a different way than what actually transpired. Until now, there has been scarce literature published on crime scene staging.Crime Scene Staging Dynamics in Homicide Cases is the first book to look at this practice, p

A thrilling and perplexing investigation of a true Victorian crime at Dublin railway station. Dublin, November 1856: George Little, the chief cashier of the Broadstone railway terminus, is found dead, lying in a pool of blood beneath his desk. He has been savagely beaten, his head almost severed; there is no sign of a murder weapon, and the office door is locked, apparently from the inside. Thousands of pounds in gold and silver are left untouched at the scene of the crime. Augustus Guy, Ireland's most experienced detective, teams up with Dublin's leading lawyer to investigate the murder. But the mystery defies all explanation, and two celebrated sleuths sent by Scotland Yard soon return to London, baffled. Five suspects are arrested then released, with every step of the salacious case followed by the press, clamouring for answers. But then a local woman comes forward, claiming to know the murderer... 'The Dublin Railway Murder is a true-crime masterclass' Philip Gray, author of Two Storm Wood

**A Guardian 'Best Thriller of the Year!'** The New York Times bestselling author of Magpie Murders and Moriarty brilliantly reinvents the classic crime novel once again with this clever and inventive mystery starring a fictional version of the author himself as the Watson to a modern-day Holmes, investigating a case involving buried secrets, murder, and a trail of bloody clues. A woman crosses a London street. It is just after 11am on a bright spring morning, and she is going into a funeral parlor to plan her own service. Six hours later the woman is dead, strangled with a crimson curtain cord in her own home. Enter disgraced police detective Daniel Hawthorne, a brilliant, eccentric man as quick with an insult as he is to crack a case. And Hawthorne has a partner, the celebrated novelist Anthony Horowitz, curious about the case and looking for new material. As brusque, impatient, and annoying as Hawthorne can be, Horowitz—a seasoned hand when it comes to crime stories—suspects the detective may be on to something, and is irresistibly drawn into the mystery. But as the case unfolds, Horowitz realizes he’s at the center of a story he can’t control . . . and that his brilliant partner may be hiding dark and mysterious secrets of his own. A masterful and tricky mystery which plays games at many levels, The Word Is Murder is Anthony Horowitz at his very best.

A piercing, provocative true story that is also a commentary on our system of justice, centered around a wrongful murder conviction that bares the dark side of the American soul. This book highlights a case that was front page news--featured on "60 Minutes", in The New York Times in 1993.

Welcome to Broadway - and to an unthinkable crime! Former theatre starlet turned amateur sleuth Jessie Beckett gets mixed up in murder when an on-stage shooting turns all too real. New York, 1926. It's not like Jessie Beckett goes around looking for murders to solve, but the vaudeville star turned movie script girl has a natural talent for it. After a lifetime on stage, she's sensitive to details that other people miss. So when leading theater star Allen Crenshaw is shot live on stage during a performance of hit Broadway show Rules of Engagement - a horrified Jessie watching from the second row - she knows she has to act fast before Allen's co-star, the beautiful Norah Rose, goes down for murder. After all, it was Norah who fired the fateful bullet . . . even if the shooting was all part of the show. Jessie investigates those closest to Allen - the presence of her theater companion, the superstar Adele Astaire, opening doors wherever they go - and finds only enemies. With the suspects for the disliked actor so numerous, can she uncover the truth in time to save Norah - or will the killer silence her too? Packed with real-life stars of the stage and screen, this page-turning romp through the boards and backstreets of Broadway is a perfect pick for readers who enjoy Jazz Age mysteries with intrepid female sleuths.

“A razor-sharp delight! . . . a wonderful and witty mash-up of murder mystery and onstage/offstage intrigue.” — Tom Ford, director and Equity actor (Sweeney Todd) Imagine an Agatha Christie whodunit set to a Stephen Sondheim soundtrack. Asher Kaufman doesn’t have to—because he’s living it. In this laugh-out-loud funny backstage tale (a sequel to All the World’s a Stage Fright), our hero—a fallible local theater critic—once again finds himself in an uncomfortable role: acting in a professional stage production so he can write about the experience for his newspaper, the Cleveland Jewish Chronicle. This time, the show is the angry, bloody, and brilliant musical Sweeney Todd. And in addition to mastering the musical’s famously challenging lyrics and performing its dark, enigmatic melodies, Asher finds himself in the middle of an unscripted, onstage, opening night murder. The police detective leading the investigation is a no-nonsense crime solver but a fish out of water in the world of theater, so she asks Asher to be her cultural advisor on the case. Now, he must help find out which of his quirky castmates is a killer. They all claim innocence, but as Asher knows firsthand, they could just be acting.