Review: THE SOUND OF MURDER by Cindy Brown

There's been a rash of suicides and catalytic converter thefts at Sunnydale Retirement Community. Luckily 20-something sleuth Ivy Meadows is house-sitting for a senior citizen on a four month foray to New Zealand. Ivy's still only a part-time detective - in training. Her real dream is to become a Broadway star! She's sort of a Nancy Drew Barrymore. Luckily, Sunnydale is adjacent to the Desert Magic Dinner Theater, where she is in rehearsal for a new musical. So while she's not on stage, she can look into the suspicious going-on at Sunnydale for Duda Detective Agency, where she spends the rest of her time working for her gumshoe uncle. All she has to do is water the plants and take care of the swimming pool - except she's deathly afraid of water. That's something readers might already know if they read Cindy Brown's first Ivy Meadows Mystery, MACDEATH, published by Henery Press earlier this year. In that book, Ivy solved a murder while starring in a circus-themed MACBETH, a kitschy cross between Shakespeare and PIPPIN. (To find out more about MACDEATH, visit www.broadwayworld.com/bwwbooks/article/BWW-Reviews-MACDEATH-20150202.)

In THE SOUND OF MURDER Brown's breezy, lightly satiric book casts Ivy in a mirthful musical mash-up called "The Sound of Cabaret," in which she plays Teasel, whose big number is "Sixteen Going on Twenty One."

"I am sixteen going on twenty-one,

Pure as the driven snow.

Unschooled in love,

And ignorant of

The lessons I ought to know."

.

Brown also introduces an ALL ABOUT EVE-style plot in which leading lady Marge (Arizona's answer to Ethel Merman) is suddenly sidelined and replaced by her understudy, Bitsy. Both are Sunnydale residents, naturally, so the Mother Superior's stint in a local hospital leaves her rival to sing the show's uplifting anthem.

"Climb out of the gutter,

Wipe off your blush.

Nazis are behind you,

You'll make it if you rush."

.

Apparently just singing "How Do You Solve A Problem Like A Nightclub?" with the other nuns wasn't quite enough for ambitious Bitsy. But did she did she have a hand in Marge's 'accident'? There's a full array of suspicious characters in the cast, all of whom are sharply and wittily portrayed by Brown in her sophomore outing. When Ivy isn't in full nun's habit, she's dating Jeremy, the sexy Phoenix fireman who came to her rescue when she accidentally burned down her apartment, and watching over Cody, her developmentally disabled brother, who is bravely entering the dating world for the first time.

Naturally a big Broadway producer is coming to check out the show, and possibly take it to New York - and maybe Ivy along with it! While you might expect to find MURDER SHE WROTE's Jessica Fletcher undercover in an Arizona retirement community, Cindy Brown's Ivy Meadows is the sort of resilient character who feels at home wherever she hangs her deerstalker. In true cinematic style, she opens the show and closes the case on the very same action-packed night - with some character-building revelations along the way, of course. I'm already looking forward to Ivy's next (highly theatrical) adventure - wherever it may lead her!

THE SOUND OF MURDER by Cindy Brown is available from Henery Press www.henerypress.com or from Amazon.com in Kindle, hardcover, and paperback editions.

To post a comment, you must register and login.