Stage Fright: A Cambridge Mystery

By Christine Poulson

All is not well at Cambridge University's St. Ethelreda's College. The head of the English Department is dead, and Professor Cassandra James is appointed the task of running the department. Faced with the choice of whipping her underperforming colleagues into shape or losing the much-needed funding for the program, Cassandra resigns herself to the challenge. However, when she stumbles upon the former head's private papers and realizes that the death was no accident, Cassandra is forced to use her academic expertise of solving obscure literary puzzles for a very different purpose: tracking down a killer.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312340745
• ISBN13: 9780312340742
• Release Date: May 2005
• Publisher: Minotaur Books
• Length: 240 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.8" x 8.7"

Customer Reviews

fantastic English mystery in the Christie tradition

While on maternity leave from Cambridge University and with her husband away handling a legal matter in Los Angeles, Professor Cassandra James meets her neighbor actress Melissa Meadows and her spouse Keith Kingleigh. Melissa and Cassandra share an affinity since both recently gave birth prematurely. Kevin is going to direct a production starring Melissa. He asks Cassandra to adapt the Victorian drama East Lynn, which she agrees to do. As opening night beckons, Cassandra notices the cast seems extra nervous. Later an anxious Melissa calls Cassandra believing that someone is stalking her. Cassandra tries to calm her down. The next day Melissa fails to appear for a rehearsal so Cassandra goes to visit her. Melissa is gone without a word, but abandoned her six month old baby that she had shown so much love. With her own fussy infant at her side, Cassandra wonders what happened to her new friend while unable to contact Stephen, dealing with the abrupt arrival of her first husband, and Detective Sergeant Vickers suspecting the professor killed the actress. STAGE FRIGHT, the second Professor James tale (see MURDER IS ACADEMIC), is a fabulous amateur sleuth mystery that builds up the suspense slowly so that the reader like the heroine suspects everyone's motives. Either foul play occurred or Melissa had played the role of a loving mother, but Cassandra cannot find a motive for either scenario while the evidence points towards her so that even the audience will believe she harmed or murdered the actress. This is a fantastic English mystery in the Christie tradition. Harriet Klausner