Shooting Star (A Victoria Trumbull Mystery)

Victoria Turnbull has worked hard to develop a play which shows the social and cultural side of Mary Shelly's FRANKENSTEIN, but someone is murdering the characters in the order of their appearance in Cynthia Rigg's SHOOTING STAR. The characters in this delightful who-done-it are so finely drawn, they skirt close to stereotypes, which makes for relaxing reading. The reader can almost, but not quite put names from their own acquaintances who frequent the boards of amateur theaters. But murder is murder and the play must go on. SHOOTING STAR is excellent addition to a fine series. Nash Black, author of SINS OF THE FATHERS and QUALIFYING LAPS.

Since I read the first of the Victoria Trumbull mysteries (Deadly Nightshade) set on Martha's Vineyard, I've never been disappointed with a Cynthia Riggs mystery. They're riveting! Her characters are lively and as real as the next-door neighbors or your coworkers. The island is alive with sensory detail, even for someone who has never been there. And every deadly plant title plays a key part in the mystery. Shooting Star is no exception, with the 92-year-old protagonist continuing to solve crimes on an island she literally knows like the back of her hand. Even actors in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein Unbound, accustomed to the usual theater world backstabbing, were unprepared for this summer, for murder, and for a missing 8-year-old cast member! Cynthia Rigg's own background is fascinating: a 13th-generation islander, a highly talented writer, geologist, and holder of a U.S. Coast Guard Master License for 100-ton vessels. Lots of coastal seafaring authenticity in the series.

I like all Cynthia's novels and I preorder them. I like the detail she has on the flora, fauna, landscape and landmarks on the Vineyard. I also think her mysteries are interesting and complicated enough to ensure that the reader is trying to figure out who did it throughout the book. I hope she writes more books.

This one is filled with a lot of characters, but I did not find it confusing...and the humor this time around was a lot of fun.

On Martha's Vineyard, nonagenarian poet Victoria Trumbull is excited as she is the playwright of Island Players, a local amateur group's summer stock adaptation of Frankenstein that is truer to the Shelley novel than Hollywood's poetic license. Many of her friends have parts in the production and all seems to be going fine at first until maniacal martinet director Dearborn Hall begins spinning the production closer to Hollywood than Shelley's condemnation of the horrors of the Industrial Revolution. Still Victoria feels good about her work as the theatre prepares for opening night. However, disaster strikes when eight-year-old performer Teddy Vanderhoop, performing the role of Victor's five years old younger brother vanishes. At about the same time he disappears, someone kills Peg Storm, the actress performing the part of the Frankenstein housekeeper. Frightened by the tragedies as everyone assumes Teddy's dead, cast members quit before they are killed too. Dearborn refuses to close the production down as the show must go on even while the police search for the child and the killer as does the ninety-two years old first time playwright. The seventh Martha's Vineyard mystery thriller is a fun lighthearted tale that fans of the series will fully enjoy. Besides insight into the original Frankenstein, the whodunit is shrewdly set up from almost the onset keeping readers wondering who and why. SHOOTING STAR is a wonderful amateur sleuth tale (although the feisty heroine has become certified as a graduate of the Tisbury Citizen Police Academy) that will have the audience applauding for encore performances. Harriet Klausner