Customer Reviews

Last Act (Coronet Books)

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I found this novel a pleasant diversion---an enjoyable light mystery very much in the vein of works by authors Mary Stewart and Phyllis A. Whitney. If you appreciate the style of those two authors, you'll likely enjoy this book.

The following is the blurb from the dust jacket:

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Tragically widowed, herself under the sentence of death, Anne Paget gamble her few remaining months by accepting the surprise offer of a part in "Regulus," the recently discovered lost opera Beethoven wrote for the Congress of Vienna. It is to be staged in the tiny European principality of Lissenberg to celebrate another international peace conference, on which high hopes are built.

Arriving in the green and secure valley, with its gabled buildings and extraordinarily modern opera complex, Anne soon realizes that hers has indeed been a gamble. Greeted with acclaim and soon raised from understudy to star, she is more and more aware of the dangerous crosscurrents that underlie the glittering society of Lissenberg. Sabotage and murder threaten both the opera and the peace conference, and despite the glamour of her position, Anne is hard put to know whom to suspect: The producer, Carl, who invited her, behaves more like a lover than the old friend she thought him; Prince Rudolf, connoisseur of art and women, and his millionaire nephew, who owns half of Lissenberg, both appear to be at her feet. But as danger and tension mount, Anne knows that nothing is as it seems. Can she even trust Michael, the handsome young jack-of-all-trades, who at first assumes the role of her protector? The last act of "Regulus" is nearly final for Anne as well, and she needs all her quick wit and courage if she is to save both herself and Lissenberg from disaster.

In the immensely popular tradition of her "One Way to Venice" and "Strangers in Company," Jane Aiken Hodge in "Last Act" sets an enchanting heroine against the exotic background of magical Lissenberg to achieve a story as dazzling and compelling as a modern fairy tale.