fun lighthearted Martha's Vineyard mystery thriller

books:


	• Shooting Star: A Martha's Vineyard Mystery (Martha's Vineyard Mysteries) Cynthia Riggs St. Martin's Minotaur, 2007 - 272 pages average customer review:based on 4 reviews view larger image
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Disappointed

I was disappointed in the latest Cynthia Riggs. I've enjoyed all the previous 'Victoria Trumbull' mysteries but found this one a bit tedious and confusing.

Nice summer whodonit

In Cynthia Riggs mystery, Shooting Star, Martha's Vineyard is not just the touristy locale that is loved by so many. Island Players, the local community theater, is the setting for a fast and interesting story of child disappearance, and murder.

The actors are performing an adaptation of Mary Shelly's Frankenstein. Victoria Trumball is the 92-year-old poet who has written this serious adaptation, and she is also an part-time sleuth. The new artistic director is causing a stir when he continually pushes to turn the playhouse into an equity theater with professional actors. A controversy is abounding with those that want the theater to stay a community theater with local amateur actors.

The book starts the night before opening night when an eight-year-old actor, who is playing the part of Frankenstein's young brother, disappears. He was last seen with one of the other actors, Peg Storm, who has been found dead. The child is missing and an island-wide search is started. A visiting forensic scientist is called in to help the local police. More actors turn up dead and other characters are brought into the story to keep it interesting. The fast pace of the book kept me guessing just who was the bad guy, or gal--and even though I thought I had it figured out, it was not who I thought.

Armchair Interviews says: Recommended for a nice quick read for that summer vacation.

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fun lighthearted Martha's Vineyard mystery thriller

On Martha's Vineyard, nonagenarian poet Victoria Trumbull is excited as she is the playwright of Island Players, a local amateur group's summer stock adaptation of Frankenstein that is truer to the Shelley novel than Hollywood's poetic license. Many of her friends have parts in the production and all seems to be going fine at first until maniacal martinet director Dearborn Hall begins spinning the production closer to Hollywood than Shelley's condemnation of the horrors of the Industrial Revolution. Still Victoria feels good about her work as the theatre prepares for opening night.

However, disaster strikes when eight-year-old performer Teddy Vanderhoop, performing the role of Victor's five years old younger brother vanishes. At about the same time he disappears, someone kills Peg Storm, the actress performing the part of the Frankenstein housekeeper. Frightened by the tragedies as everyone assumes Teddy's dead, cast members quit before they are killed too. Dearborn refuses to close the production down as the show must go on even while the police search for the child and the killer as does the ninety-two years old first time playwright.

The seventh Martha's Vineyard mystery thriller is a fun lighthearted tale that fans of the series will fully enjoy. Besides insight into the original Frankenstein, the whodunit is shrewdly set up from almost the onset keeping readers wondering who and why. SHOOTING STAR is a wonderful amateur sleuth tale (although the feisty heroine has become certified as a graduate of the Tisbury Citizen Police Academy) that will have the audience applauding for encore performances.

Harriet Klausner

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This one had me laughing...in a good way

This one is filled with a lot of characters, but I did not find it confusing...and the humor this time around was a lot of fun.

In Shooting Star, ninety-two-year-old poet Victoria Trumbull becomes embroiled in controversy at the community theater on Martha?s Vineyard. The new artistic director has announced plans to replace local amateur talent with off-Island professionals, and the cast and crew react murderously.

Victoria intended the theater?s current production, her adaptation of Frankenstein, by Mary Shelley, to debunk the common farcical movie-monster interpretation by returning to Shelley?s original serious commentary on the Industrial Revolution. However, after the night of the dress rehearsal, Victoria loses control over the production, and her drama begins to take a strange course.

On that night, the eight-year-old boy playing the part of Frankenstein?s young brother disappears, and before a search can begin, a killer strikes. The Vineyard?s police forces mobilize for an Island-wide search. In the original story of Frankenstein, the boy is the first victim of the monster, and Victoria fears that a copycat killer is following her playscript. She determines to find the missing boy and track down the killer before more deaths occur.

Along with familiar Island characters from her previous books, the author introduces a cast of new and often eccentric players. Shooting Star, the seventh book in the Martha?s Vineyard mystery series, explores the rich setting of the Island that author Cynthia Riggs knows well, from the rose-covered Dukes County jail on Edgartown?s Main Street to the quaint ferry terminal in Oak Bluffs. It?s a delightful read that both fans and newcomers to the series will be sure to enjoy.

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