The ex-revue star Miriam Birdseye and her friend, Russian dancer Natasha DuVivian nee Nevkorina, are drawn into a local Christmas panto when the lead Prince Charming falls to her death through a trapdoor in the stage floor; but there seems to be no end to the people who wanted her dead, and hers is only the first in a string of deaths related to the theater - can Miriam and Natasha solve the crime before any more people die?.... I’ve been enjoying Elly Griffiths’ Magic Men series, initially set in the music-hall world of 1950s England, so when she cited this book as an influence, I was pleased to find it still in print (in e-book form anyway). This is a comic mystery, if you will, full of absurd characters and wholly hilarious lines; and, having been written in 1950 or so, there’s a lot of information about that particular time and place, up to and including ration books of coupons for everything from foodstuffs to clothing and the black market in those books. I believe this is the fifth in a series featuring Miriam and Natasha, and hope to be able to find the earlier books as they are very entertaining characters! Ms. Spain being a gay woman at a time when such people were barely considered possible, there are sly quips about lesbianism, for example, a girls’ school called Radcliff Hall (the name of a very famous gay woman writer of that time, with a slight spelling change, whose book The Well of Loneliness is a classic of its kind, albeit a very very depressing one), and the English pantomime tradition of having men play female characters and vice versa is milked for all it’s worth; very funny, and definitely recommended! ( )

One could describe the books in this series as comedy crime I suppose. They feature Miriam Birdseye and Natasha DuVivien who seem to fall into a variation of crime situations willy-nilly. In 'Cinderella Goes To The Morgue' they become involved in the Pantomime, Cinderella, in which certain members of the cast are slain. The style of writing is most curious ,a sort of tongue-in cheek method which is initially amusing,but as the story progresses,could well make the reader want to scream. ( )