Author:
Writer, singer and actor Joanne Sydney Lessner draws on her own experiences pursuing a performing career in New York City for her acclaimed Isobel Spice Mysteries. With her husband, composer/conductor Joshua Rosenblum, she has co-authored several musicals, including the cult hit Fermat’s Last Tango and Einstein’s Dreams, based on the celebrated novel by Alan Lightman, opening Off Broadway in November 2019. Her play Critical Mass received its Off Broadway premiere in October 2010. Joanne is also a regular contributor to Opera News and a graduate of Yale University.

Dinner theater can be a death sentence. 

Actress Isobel Spice and her best friend Delphi Kramer are thrilled to finally have an opportunity to perform together, even if it’s just a cheesy interactive murder mystery at a judge’s lifetime achievement dinner. But when Isobel’s dramatic death scene is upstaged by a real murder and Delphi is left holding the still-smoking gun, Isobel drops the role of victim and assumes the role of detective. With the help of her precocious brother Percival and her reluctant temp agent James Cooke, Isobel peels back layers of deception to reveal a shocking abuse of power—and no shortage of suspects eager to deliver justice to a man who denied it to so many.

And Justice for Some

As much as James hated to admit it, lunch with Isobel had lightened his mood, even though he still had to make amends to Jayla and Lily. In a way, Isobel had been both the most and least scary of the three to face. But in retrospect, he should have known that, approached delicately, she'd make things easy for him. She had, and he was grateful. Lily was less likely to be so magnanimous, and Jayla...well, he didn't want to contemplate where that conversation would go. Fortunately, she was on her honeymoon, so he could postpone it for another few weeks. Lily was a different story, but he decided to invoke "one day at a time" and give himself the rest of this one off. Besides, in order to complete his amends to Isobel, he had to follow through on his promise to find a record of inmates at that horrific youth camp. 


There but for the grace of God, he thought. 


Chapter 29