After an extended business trip in Europe, Lindy Haggerty is happy to be home though her husband and their daughter are in Europe and their son in Boston. The only family member around to keep Lindy company, is her son's dirty dog. However, in a definite weak moment or perhaps the beginning of senility, Lindy agrees to direct an amateur production during the town's Halloween carnival as part of the Mischief Night Marathon.

However, the friendly intent at the onset quickly converts into people battling over the events. Soon someone takes the squabbles up a notch with pranks based on Spencer's Seven Deadly Sins. The antics start turning nastier and uglier until murder finally occurs. The killer turns towards Lindy as the eighth sinner worthy of death unless the retired dancer can find a different ending to this drama that allows her to voice the final coda.

The fourth Lindy Haggerty amateur sleuth mystery, Halloween Murder, is a fun who-done-it that sub-genre readers will enjoy because the plot seems real due to the bickering of the ensemble cast that makes up the Mischief Night Marathon committee. The story line engages the audience from the very beginning when Lindy, feeling like a sucker, lectures the dirty dog snoozing in her car until the final curtain call. Series fans will relish this Halloween treat while newcomers will commence with a Shelley Freydont marathon.

Harriet Klausner

I love theatrical murders and this is delightful. The author did a great job of describing the backstage bickering and pressures. The characters are well developed. Lindy Haggerty is suffering from an empty nest when an offer to get back into show business arrives in the form of her old friend. She joins the dance company only to find a Diva from hell causing trouble for everyone. I liked the light touch of romance. The clues and red herrings were spread about in a minefield of misdirection. If I had one complaint it is that Ms Freydont took so long to kill the victim. I was so annoyed by the character I was ready to do it myself. This book is a great read.

I would suggest that you delay starting this book if you have anything else that requires your attention. If you have forgotten your college "all nighters" this book will bring it back to you. I have not seen this many suspects and red herrings since reading my last Benni Harper mystery. Lindy Haggerty is a worthy addition to the new group of thinking lady detectives. I am looking forward to the next visit from Lindy.

"Touring" with Lindy Haggerty and sharing her adventures was great fun! Having always enjoyed dance, but being stuck with two left feet, reading Backstage Murder gave me a peek at a world I'd never have a chance to know. Having a murder and great characters as part of the ingredients made Backstage Murder a terrific read!

Linda Haggerty frets her way through another murder mystery that initially seemed to promise a lot but somehow failed to deliver.

The Easton Arts Retreat is celebrating it's 50 anniversary, and the Jeremy Ash Dance Company has been invited to open the festivities. For Jeremy Ash, the director and founder of said dance company, this gig is a very important one, as, not only was he was the proud recipient of the prestigious Easton Scholarship, but also because Marguerite Easton was one of the few people to offer him support and help when he was trying to kick his drug addiction. However a very grim portent of things to come greets the dance company as soon as they reach the retreat. The retreat is nestled amongst some very sheer mountain-like hills, and one of the students, Larry Cleveland, at the summer camp seems to have accidentally fallen to his death. The local sheriff, who has a personal grudge against Marguerite Easton (his ex-fiancee had dumped him to marry one of the Retreat's counselors) and who seems to be dangerously homophobic, is all set to make more of this accident than it is, when another student goes missing.

Lindy is seriously disturbed by all that she's witnessing. The Retreat seems to be a hotbed of secrets and innuendo. To begin with, it looks as if Larry Cleveland was not a very well liked young man, and it appears as if he was very adapt at providing sexual favours in order to get what he wanted. The sheriff thinks that he was all set to blackmail one of the Retreat's counselors, when he was murdered by said counselor, who just happens to be the very one that married the sheriff's ex-fiancee. Could the sheriff be right? And then there is the strange behaviour of Jeremy Ash. Jeremy seems to be very tense and very much on edge, and it is affecting the manner in which he deals with the members of his company, and most importantly, with Biddy, Lindy's best friend. What does Jeremy know, and could it seriously harm the Easton Retreat? On top of it all, Lindy's husband, Glen (who disapproves of her tendency to fall into murder investigations) is about to turn up for the weekend. What will he have to say about this latest suspicious death that Lindy seems to be mixed-up in? Not only that, but Jeremy has invited Bill, the ex-policeman with whom Lindy has been solving mysteries (and with whom Lindy has a highly charged relationship), down to unofficially take a look at what's going on, because he fears what the sheriff may do. What will happen when Glen and Bill finally meet? And where is the missing student? Is he dead, or has he merely run away? And if so, why?

"The Midsummer Murders" held out a lot of promise. From the manner in which the first few chapters were shaping, I expected a whole more than was finally delivered, esp given Jeremy's and his counselor friend's strange behaviour. As with the previous mystery in this series, "The High Seas Murder" a lot of things occurred that had very little to do with the mystery at hand -- Lindy's relationship with Bill, what this could mean to her marriage, Biddy's frustration over her relationship with Jeremy, etc -- with the clues and hints about what really going on in this murder mystery strewn about for the reader to collect and piece together. And then, suddenly in the last quarter of the novel, the mystery suddenly took off, and everything fell into place. However, I still came away feeling shortchanged. Many characters in this novel could have done with a lot more development, and that tight pacing that keeps you glued to the pages was frequently absent. This book had all the potential of being a really good read, instead it was filled with distractingly extraneous bits.

If you like game-shows like Fox's "Murder in Small Town X" where you get to piece together all the relevant information, from all the nonessential stuff made available to you, then this novel should satisfy amply.

Great addition to the series. Love these characters.

Shelley Freydont continues with her series and provides her customary wit and incisive look into the world of dance. It's suspenseful, quirky and highly entertaining. She thoroughly understands and communicates the world of theatrical intrigue. A must-read for murder mystery fans and theatre nuts.

The theatrical setting and back stage drama are the things which drew me to this series. This, the second book in the Lindy Haggerty Mystery series, certainly does not disappoint. Ms Freydont's characters are three dimensional and colorfully drawn. Here she combines, classical dancers, opera singers, cabaret performers and a rock star to achieve a fascinating group of victims and suspects. The plot has many twists and turns. The cruise ship is surrounded by a school of red herring. She mixes information about the art form skillfully with murder and soap opera. I highly recommend this book to mystery and theater lovers alike.

Shelley Freydont draws from a rich history of "road" stories to weave a mystery yarn that not only takes the reader on a luxury cruise but also allows us civilians a peek behind the show business curtain. Her intellegent sense of humor and cache of details kept me turning pages trying to figure out who was who? I look forward to learning more about the world of dance and find the organizational insight quite helpful when trying to manage day to day.

This book puts Lindy Haggerty in the same class with top fictional sleuths.I could't put High Seas Murder down. Thanks Freydont for a suspenseful and titilating cruise.