With wit and heart.

In this second of Susan Sussman's short-lived Morgan Taylor series, Chicago theatre star Morgan takes to the high seas -- or at least to the stage of a cruise ship off the coast of Miami -- to replace a performer who died on board under somewhat mysterious circumstances, as a favour to her old friend from acting school days. Just off an eight-month run of Rent in Chicago facing the bleak cold of December, a three-week ensemble gig on a tropical cruise seems just the ticket.

I fell in total love with Sussman's writing with the first book in the series, Audition For Murder, and was delighted with this rare find audiobook, and the fact that it's also performed by Stephanie Brush who is absolutely outstanding, is complete bliss. Listening to Brush narrate is like watching a one-woman stage play. She sings, she dances, she does accents and characters so impeccably, you leave the audiobook feeling you've just been to a live theatrical production.

The novel is written by a mature professional, an author at the height of her craft, and it also leaves me feeling nostalgic for that too-brief time of American mystery writing just before 9/11 made all art 'ironic' and before smartphones made everybody stupid.

I cannot recommend this book and the two-book series strongly enough.

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