“I want you all out—gone—dead—exterminated!” Alex Household had cried when, after a lifetime of struggle, he lost the starring role in a new play to an actor who couldn’t remember his lines. But did that mean that it was Alex who had shot the leading man dead during his climactic speech? Charles Paris, for one, could see many logical suspects, from the devious producer, to the gullible playwright, to the young starlet’s overprotective mother.
But before Charles Paris, our middle-aged actor-drinker-detective, could begin his investigation, he was in for a shock: the powers-that-be chose him as the new leading man. Finally, Charles would discover stardom—and what a dead man saw in the last moments of his life!
Simon Brett is the creator of six series of detective novels, as well as ten stand-alone novels. His stand-alone novel A Shock to the System was adapted as a film starring Michael Caine. He has been awarded the CWA’s prestigious Diamond Dagger for an outstanding body of work and the Malice Domestic Award for lifetime achievement. He was awarded an OBE in the 2016 New Year’s Honours for Services to Literature and also was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature. He is a former president of Britain’s Crime Writers Association. He worked as a producer in radio and television before taking up writing full-time.
Geoffrey Howard (a.k.a. Ralph Cosham) (1936–2014) was a British journalist who changed careers to become a narrator and screen and stage actor. He performed in more than one hundred professional theatrical roles. His audiobook narrations were named “Audio Best of the Year” by Publishers Weekly, and he won seven AudioFile Earphones Awards, and in 2013 he won the coveted Audie Award for Best Mystery Narration for his reading of Louise Penny’s The Beautiful Mystery.