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

In the crowded elevator, another juror was loudly singing the praises of a restaurant on Mott Street, so Isobel followed him there and took a table by herself in the corner. The premises trod the line between unprepossessing and ready to be repossessed, but the food was cheap and surprisingly tasty, and Isobel found herself marginally cheered. By the time she returned to the courthouse, the rain was letting up, and she decided to interpret these small omens as incentive to make the best of her situation. After all, she was stuck. No excuse yet invented by man (or presumably woman) would spring her now. Well, as Percival liked to say, she'd either have a great experience or a great story to tell.


Chapter 42