A FATAL OVERTURE

An Irish Jewish diva is more adept at solving crimes than ordering her own life.

The year 1900 dawns with a surprise for trouser-role opera singer Ella Shane: a visit from the mother and aunts of her love, Gilbert Saint Aubyn, Duke of Leith. The aristocratic ladies have come to urge Shane to patch up her differences with Gil over her career through a marriage contract. Indeed, Ella is urged to marry Gil by many friends and relatives, including her cousin Tommy, a former champion boxer who shares a Greenwich Village house with her and manages the Ella Shane Opera Company. The visiting ladies move into Ella’s house after they discover a man stabbed to death in their hotel suite. Ella’s friend Hetty, a reporter, is working undercover at the hotel for a story she won’t discuss in detail. But she does reveal that the dead man, son of the owner, was known to prey on women. Shane and Gil agree to an informal engagement. Despite their passion for each other, though, they still can’t agree on how many tours Shane will be able to make. Gil has a bad feeling about his relatives and the dead man, and when Hetty claims to have killed him in self-defense, Ella resolves to discover the truth, unaware that she and Gil face danger from another source.

The historical detail and the heroine’s romance, brimming with tension, make up for the weak mystery.