Peak Season for Murder

July 29, 2013
In Lukasik’s middling third Leigh Girard mystery set in Door County, Wis. (after 2009’s Death’s Door), the reporter looks into the possible murder of a homeless man, Brownie Lawrence. But that crime has to take a back seat to the feature article she’s writing on the Bayside Theater for its 65th anniversary. Some of the actors there for the current summer season were also trodding the boards 23 years earlier when local actress Danielle Moyer disappeared, never to be seen again. Jake Stevens, the Door Gazette editor, is not especially interested in the oddities plaguing the theater, such as an invasion of bats and dangerous props, but Leigh can’t help questioning if it’s all connected to the even stranger things going on at Danielle’s abandoned family cabin—especially after one of the actors dies. Too many side stories and suspects, and an unsatisfying solution to Brownie’s death, lead to unnecessary confusion.