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

James shaded his eyes and looked up at the red brick building, trying to guess which of the fourth-floor windows was Isobel's. The curtains were still drawn on all of them, even though it was almost 10:00 a.m., but at this point he didn't care about waking her. He just wanted to tell her what he had learned from Professor Lin and make sure she was safe - not necessarily in that order. It troubled him that Isobel, who he knew was addicted to her iPhone, hadn't picked up his calls last night or returned the message he'd finally left. His first thought was that she was with Hugh, and he'd had to work hard to master the strange mix of emotions that overtook him. But as the evening wore on, he felt certain that even if she were with that twerp, she'd have checked her phone at some point. On the other hand, he reasoned, if she was with Hugh, it might have been difficult for her to steal a moment to call him back.


Chapter 34