Murder in Two Acts

Creative Woman Mysteries #11

by Christy Barritt

Genres: Mystery, Cozy Mystery

226 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Christy Barritt is an author, freelance writer and speaker who lives in Virginia. She’s married to her Prince Charming, a man who thinks she’s hilarious—but only when she’s not trying to be. Christy’s a self-proclaimed klutz, an avid music lover who’s known for spontaneously bursting into song, and a road trip aficionado. She’s only won one contest in her life—and her prize was kissing a pig (okay, okay… actually she did win the Daphne du Maurier Award for Excellence in Suspense and Mystery also). Her current claim to fame is showing off her mother, who looks just like former First Lady Barbara Bush
When she’s not working or spending time with her family, she enjoys singing, playing the guitar, and exploring small, unsuspecting towns where people have no idea how accident prone she is.

Reviews

[Glen · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Creative Woman group go to a dinner theater murder mystery. Of course, somebody is really murdered. This already feels so 90s. Does this sort of thing still go on? Haven't all the mystery writers got out of their systems?

Our primary sleuth joins the cast of ANOTHER murder mystery dinner theater production, where half the cast was in the last production.

On the whole, it felt like a spoof of 90's TV.

[Jerry (Rebel With a Massive Media Library) · Rating 4 out of 5]

A fun whodunit; rather exciting and convoluted.

[Doreen Marr · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the second Creative Women Mystery by Christy Barritt that I have read. The main characters are a quirky close group of friends who are all part of the Purls of Hope, a knitting group in a small town in Oregon. All the ladies in the group are very creative, developing their own talents. When they go to a murder dinner theater to support a friend who is in the cast, they get much more than they bargained for as the director of the play dies right at their table! Shannon, who seems to always get right in the thick of trouble, wants to stay out of this time, but the director's widow asks her to look into her husband's death. Then Essie, the friend they went to watch in the play, becomes the main suspect. The clues lead Shannon from one cast member to another, and even to another murder mystery play. It turns out that the director was not very well-liked so there seems to be plenty of suspects who disliked him. But which one disliked him enough to murder him? Shannon tries to sort out the truth, even going undercover in the second play, without getting herself into too much trouble. Fun read, would like to read more about Shannon and her friends. Kept me guessing until the end.

[Ellen · Rating 5 out of 5]

Exceptional writing. I was kept guessing who was guilty until the end. A wonderful story.

[Linda · Rating 3 out of 5]

I hate to be the first one to review this book and give it only 3 stars, especially since I really like a series that Christy Barritt writes, but here are my complaints:

The reader is bombarded with about 8 characters in the first pages of the story, members of the Purls of Hope knitting club of Apple Grove, Oregon. Luckily the characters only appear sparsely one at a time after that. The heroine of the series is Shannon McClain. She is very one-sided and the reader doesn't get to know her well. This mystery is somewhere in a list of other books that she stars in but there are no lists to be found. Background is hinted at but not explained. The reader is three-fourths thru the book before discovering that Shannon has twins in college and nearly at the end before discovering that her husband died back in Scotland.

This book is part of a Book Club selection called Creative Woman Mysteries and only by going to their website was a I able to find out some background details. Apparently to buy them one must sign up for the book club and a book comes by mail monthly; not a way that I like to buy books, especially since it doesn't seem that one can actively choose the book. Only the first book in this series is listed there so maybe this is the second book, although the Police Chief hints that she has gotten in his way and solved many mysteries before.

With all that being said, if all of the above could be fixed, I liked the plot, and the way that Shannon sought out clues to the murder. It happens on a docked cruise ship- murder of the owner of a mystery theater dinner cruise. Shannon gets involved when a friend of hers becomes a suspect. I fleetingly suspected the perpetrator of the crime but discarded the idea.

[Rose Blum · Rating 2 out of 5]

Liked the Scottish part of the novel.