Review
"Hollywood Security operative Scott Elliott, two days away from his wedding, accepts what seems like a simple assignment – discourage a romance between an actor and a burlesque star that may be detrimental to the filming of Shakespeare’s The Tempest. In post-war Hollywood, The Tempest seems likely to be the last great swan song of a group of British Colonists, if their leading man can be separated from his 'farmer’s daughter.' As the cast of characters grows, so does the complexity of the case, echoing the Bard’s final work. Pitch perfect dialogue and descriptions of the era, nicely accented by pen and ink line drawings, make this a neat little treasure for fans of historical mysteries and Shakespeare alike."
Maryelizabeth Hart, Mysterious Galaxy' The Plot Thickens
"The breezy, humorous crime novel is a sub-genre that flourished in the 1930s and ’40s, either influenced by or influencing the motion picture screwball comedies of the day. Authors like Craig Rice, Stuart Palmer and Harry Kurnitz, who also scribbled for the screen, fashioned entertaining whodunits where the talk was fast and smart, the males were unflappable, the females sexy and witty and the booze flowed like water. For a quick reminder of the lovely silliness and sheer entertainment of those freer and easier days, one need look no further than Terence Faherty's short novel In A Teapot.
"This new well-plotted mystery set in 1948 Hollywood finds the author's series hero Scott Elliott only a short time past a career shift from underemployed actor to in-demand private detective. On the eve of Elliott's marriage to script reader Ella Englehart, his boss at Hollywood Security tosses him a new assignment involving a young British actor, Forest Combs, who has just been cast in a film to be based on Shakespeare's final play, “The Tempest.”
"Faherty tosses in all the proper ingredients an extremely likeable sleuthing couple, a bloody corpse and a gallery of suspects, a little light-hearted, considerably less than R-rated sex, mobsters, funny patter and even a bit of unobtrusive historical info.
"It's all frothy good fun, and as Scott and Ella do their Nick and Nora thing, working their way though a labyrinth of lies and deceptions and hidden motives to find a killer before taking their vows, it's soon made clear that the author has been playing a literary game all the while, one that readers, even those unfamiliar with Shakespeare's play, will have to admit is monstrously clever."
Dick Lochte, OC Metro, 12/8/05
Maryelizabeth Hart, Mysterious Galaxy' The Plot Thickens
"The breezy, humorous crime novel is a sub-genre that flourished in the 1930s and ’40s, either influenced by or influencing the motion picture screwball comedies of the day. Authors like Craig Rice, Stuart Palmer and Harry Kurnitz, who also scribbled for the screen, fashioned entertaining whodunits where the talk was fast and smart, the males were unflappable, the females sexy and witty and the booze flowed like water. For a quick reminder of the lovely silliness and sheer entertainment of those freer and easier days, one need look no further than Terence Faherty's short novel In A Teapot.
"This new well-plotted mystery set in 1948 Hollywood finds the author's series hero Scott Elliott only a short time past a career shift from underemployed actor to in-demand private detective. On the eve of Elliott's marriage to script reader Ella Englehart, his boss at Hollywood Security tosses him a new assignment involving a young British actor, Forest Combs, who has just been cast in a film to be based on Shakespeare's final play, “The Tempest.”
"Faherty tosses in all the proper ingredients an extremely likeable sleuthing couple, a bloody corpse and a gallery of suspects, a little light-hearted, considerably less than R-rated sex, mobsters, funny patter and even a bit of unobtrusive historical info.
"It's all frothy good fun, and as Scott and Ella do their Nick and Nora thing, working their way though a labyrinth of lies and deceptions and hidden motives to find a killer before taking their vows, it's soon made clear that the author has been playing a literary game all the while, one that readers, even those unfamiliar with Shakespeare's play, will have to admit is monstrously clever."
Dick Lochte, OC Metro, 12/8/05
Product Description
A film version of The Tempest, William Shakespeare's final play, featuring the cream of Hollywood's aristocratic British Colony? When the project is announced in 1948, it sounds like an idea that can't miss. But then the whispers start about one of those British actors and a burlesque queen, and murder soon follows. Enter Scott Elliott, top operative of Hollywood Security and the soon-to-be husband of the lovely Ella Englehart. To get to the altar, Elliott must dodge blonde bombshells and gangsters, and solve a mystery that echoes Shakespeare's crowning work.
Shamus Award nominee for best private eye novel of 2006; also nominated by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association for the Dilys Award.
Shamus Award nominee for best private eye novel of 2006; also nominated by the Independent Mystery Booksellers Association for the Dilys Award.
