OUR MARRIAGE IS MURDER

“Writing a murder isn’t the same as committing one,” Thea Morgan-Lane assures the Italian police inspector. Try telling that to whoever’s turned the latest MurderCon into a carnival of crime.

Thea’s visit to the Hotel Castellarosa, just opening after Greg and Sonia Wilson converted it from an isolated monastery, is bittersweet. Thea first met Fred Morgan at the monastery 20 years ago, when she was a graduate student, bonded with him over shared plans to write a murder mystery called Death Takes the Castle, married him, and launched their Death Takes a Holiday series. It’s nice that the latest entry has been nominated for the Poirot Prize, to be awarded at the mystery convention they’re attending, but not so nice that the collaborators’ marriage has been a sham ever since Thea caught Fred in bed with a writer’s assistant, or that Thea’s plan to end the series about their fictional alter egos Rick and Dora Charles is upended by Fred’s public announcement that he plans to continue the series with Poirot nominee Nadine St. George, or that International Murder Writers Executive Director Deb Andersen, one of Thea’s dearest friends, suddenly drops dead at the opening reception. And that’s before Thea realizes that the murder is an uncanny imitation of the first killing in Death Takes the Castle, as are the murders that inevitably follow. The treasure hunt Thea follows in search of clues and possible treasure and the airy backbiting among conference attendees provide welcome substitutes for the customary rounds of Q&A, and despite the mounting body count, the writing is as fizzy as that Castellarosa Pomegranate Spritz that was Deb’s last drink.

Any resemblance between these fictional characters and any mystery writers living or dead is of course purely coincidental.