What do you think?
Rate this book
Maggie Ryan and Nick O'Connor #1
Audition for Murder
To escape New York City's public pressures and diminish Lisette's need for alcohol and drugs, actor Nick O'Connor and his beautiful wife accept roles in a university production of Hamlet, but someone in the cast wants Lisette dead
- GenresMystery
225 pages, Paperback
First published May 1, 1985
3 people are currently reading
476 people want to read
About the author
P.M. Carlson
29 books21 followersP.M. Carlson taught psychology and statistics at Cornell University before deciding that mystery writing was more fun. She has published twelve mystery novels and a dozen mystery short stories. Her novels have been nominated for an Edgar award, a Macavity award, and twice for Anthony awards. Two short stories were finalists for Agatha awards. She edited the Mystery Writers Annual for Mystery Writers of America for several years, and served as President of Sisters in Crime. Besides reading mysteries, she enjoys working on her Victorian house and traveling. She has lived in Guatemala, California, Maryland, Indiana, Paris, and Brooklyn. Currently she lives in New York with her husband and a Belgian sheepdog named Nero Wolfe.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
December 8, 2012
What I especially loved about P.M. Carlson's AUDITION FOR MURDER is that she really knows her theater and she really knows her Shakespeare!
That being said I'd have to agree with one reviewer who wrote that people who understand theater and have been exposed to Shakespeare's Hamlet would love this mystery while others would not enjoy it at all.
Her insightful descriptions of how directors and actors approach a part would probably strike the general mystery reader as obtuse and unnecessary. It drew me in and made the story special.
Maggie Ryan, a student who is running lights for a production of Hamlet, is an extraordinary sleuth. A gymnast and math major, she impresses from her first attention-drawing entrance. Setting the story on a college campus in the 1960s of Viet Nam protests is clever too. It allows for a clearly defined group of suspects, all well-drawn by the author.
Married professional actors Nick and Lisette, with problems of their own, sign on to spend a semester as artists-in-residence at a small upstate college. But someone apparently isn't happy with Lisette playing Ophelia and strange and sometimes dangerous things start to happen.
Besides beautiful use of language, I look for inventiveness and surprise in books and love those the best. P.M. Carlson has managed to do both things while writing quotable sentences!
Here are a couple of quotes that caught my fancy!
"Excellence is often unwelcome and difficult to forgive."
And on acting:
"The perfect detail, the instant that sends shivers down your spine...Those performances when somehow for an instant or two we connect with the universal. With eternity. When it happens, if it happens, it's worth any amount of time. It's worth your whole life."
Unfortunately there is only one other Maggie Ryan mystery. MURDER IS ACADEMIC. Both titles have just been reissued by The Mystery Company/Crum Creek Press trade paperback and Ebook, 2012.
That being said I'd have to agree with one reviewer who wrote that people who understand theater and have been exposed to Shakespeare's Hamlet would love this mystery while others would not enjoy it at all.
Her insightful descriptions of how directors and actors approach a part would probably strike the general mystery reader as obtuse and unnecessary. It drew me in and made the story special.
Maggie Ryan, a student who is running lights for a production of Hamlet, is an extraordinary sleuth. A gymnast and math major, she impresses from her first attention-drawing entrance. Setting the story on a college campus in the 1960s of Viet Nam protests is clever too. It allows for a clearly defined group of suspects, all well-drawn by the author.
Married professional actors Nick and Lisette, with problems of their own, sign on to spend a semester as artists-in-residence at a small upstate college. But someone apparently isn't happy with Lisette playing Ophelia and strange and sometimes dangerous things start to happen.
Besides beautiful use of language, I look for inventiveness and surprise in books and love those the best. P.M. Carlson has managed to do both things while writing quotable sentences!
Here are a couple of quotes that caught my fancy!
"Excellence is often unwelcome and difficult to forgive."
And on acting:
"The perfect detail, the instant that sends shivers down your spine...Those performances when somehow for an instant or two we connect with the universal. With eternity. When it happens, if it happens, it's worth any amount of time. It's worth your whole life."
Unfortunately there is only one other Maggie Ryan mystery. MURDER IS ACADEMIC. Both titles have just been reissued by The Mystery Company/Crum Creek Press trade paperback and Ebook, 2012.
November 24, 2012
If you don't like theater, and Shakespeare in particular, you'll hate this mystery. I read this years ago but completely forgot about it. We're reading it for our next mystery book group and after reading just a few pages I remembered major details. I think I enjoyed it more this time than my first reading.
The setting on a college campus in the late 1960s felt authentic to me. I enjoyed all the details involved with the staging of Hamlet, and found glimpses into the times interesting. Enough so that I've just started the second in the series, Murder is Academic.
The setting on a college campus in the late 1960s felt authentic to me. I enjoyed all the details involved with the staging of Hamlet, and found glimpses into the times interesting. Enough so that I've just started the second in the series, Murder is Academic.
October 11, 2018
Really good book. Highly recommended. Nick O'Conner and his beautiful wife, Lisette, both Broadway actors, agree to perform in a college theater department's version of "Hamlet" and teach classes in acting. There are some hard feelings among the students who thought they would play Ophelia rather than Lisette. The stage scenes and lingo are marvellous, the plot full of twists.
September 4, 2016
“Out damned spot, I say!” quote Lady MacBeth. Okay, so this is not about MacBeth but that’s one of the few quotes from Shakespeare that I remember. This is about Hamlet. To be precise it is about a college production of Hamlet with professional actors for the most part playing the leads.
The leading lady part of Ophelia is being played by Lisette and her husband, Nick O’Connor, has been hired to appear as the King along with Rob Jenner as Hamlet. Lisette has lead a troubled life and Nick is grateful to spend a few months away from New York at the bucolic campus where their only concerns should be mounting the play. Best laid plans and all that because Lisette it seems is being targeted and not in a good way. Nick and one of the students, Maggie Ryan, try setting a trap for the guilty culprit without much success.
This was a pleasant read but there was more mystery surrounding who was playing threatening pranks than the actual murder which didn’t take place until the end of the book. The lack of clues was annoying to me since I am a Christie fan and she was the queen of clues and plots. Perhaps it’s not fair to compare the first book in a series with a master of the genre but hopefully the later books are better laid out.
I will say the book was interesting with all the details of getting the production ready for the stage and like I said, it was a pleasant read. The characters were fairly well developed and the premise for the murder definitely brought Christie to mind.
I won this book in a First Reads giveaway.
The leading lady part of Ophelia is being played by Lisette and her husband, Nick O’Connor, has been hired to appear as the King along with Rob Jenner as Hamlet. Lisette has lead a troubled life and Nick is grateful to spend a few months away from New York at the bucolic campus where their only concerns should be mounting the play. Best laid plans and all that because Lisette it seems is being targeted and not in a good way. Nick and one of the students, Maggie Ryan, try setting a trap for the guilty culprit without much success.
This was a pleasant read but there was more mystery surrounding who was playing threatening pranks than the actual murder which didn’t take place until the end of the book. The lack of clues was annoying to me since I am a Christie fan and she was the queen of clues and plots. Perhaps it’s not fair to compare the first book in a series with a master of the genre but hopefully the later books are better laid out.
I will say the book was interesting with all the details of getting the production ready for the stage and like I said, it was a pleasant read. The characters were fairly well developed and the premise for the murder definitely brought Christie to mind.
I won this book in a First Reads giveaway.
June 2, 2014
this was a free book thru goodreads first reads and unfortunately I am not a shakespeare fan and as this was the theme throughout it left me wanting for more about murder and less about acting. Sorry I couldn't be more appreciative for all the hard work that went into this book.
Read
October 5, 2012This is a new edition of the mystery that introduced Maggie Ryan and Nick O'Connor, available in trade paperback and many Ebook formats (Kindle, Nook, etc.)
January 16, 2014
Nice cozy mystery, with the death happening late in the story. Lots of Hamlet quotes, as they are performing it on a University campus. The killer surprised me.
January 2, 2017
Best mystery in a long time. I had no idea who did it & all loose ends tied up.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews