A Fatal Finale

February 15, 2020
Death distracts a diva. Even in her 20s, opera star Ella Shane realized that her voice would never reach the heights needed to thrill audiences in coloratura soprano roles. So she turned her lyric gifts to pants roles: male characters originally sung by castrati but now, in the more merciful Gilded Age, given to female mezzos to spare male singers from mutilation. And as director of the Ella Shane Opera Company, she enjoys luxuries she never dreamed of growing up as Ellen O'Shaughnessy on New York's Lower East Side. Her household in Greenwich Village includes her former champion boxer cousin, Tommy Hurley, her excellent cook, Mrs. Grazich, and of course her Amazon parrot, Montezuma. With visits from Anna and Louis Abramovitz, her company's costumer and accompanist respectively, she feels no need to supplement her cozy world with, say, a husband. What she really needs is a new Juliet once her old one, played by Canadian soprano Violette Saint Claire, dies for real in the final scene of the company's road rendition of Bellini's I Capuleti e i Montecchi. Ella, who never cared much for Violette, has scant interest in her demise until her cousin Gilbert Saint Aubyn, Duke of Leith, turns up. Violette turns out to be an English noblewoman, and Saint Aubyn turns into a major distraction for Ella, disrupting her fencing lessons and velocipede rides. Unfortunately, her indifference to Violette deprives readers of any reason to engage with the soprano's death, as Kalb's series debut devolves into a tepid mating ritual of damsel and duke. No encore necessary.

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March 9, 2020
Set in 1899 Manhattan, Kalb’s unfocused debut and series launch introduces Ellen O’Shaughnessy, who runs a traveling opera company under her stage name, Ella Shane. A “trouser diva” whose mezzo-soprano voice suits her to male roles originally written for castrati, Ella is performing as Romeo when the singer playing Juliet, Violette Saint Claire, dies on stage. Ella knows little about Violette, so when the coroner rules the death an accidental nicotine poisoning, Ella considers the matter closed. Then Gilbert Saint Aubyn, Duke of Leith, announces that Violette is his missing cousin, Lady Frances Saint Aubyn, who disappeared from England two years before. Ella agrees to help the attractive duke find out more about the death. The autopsy report reveals handprint-shaped bruising, and Ella narrowly escapes several unlikely accidents in what becomes a murder case. Appealing characters and the well-drawn opera-world setting compensate only in part for the slow, unsuspenseful plot. Kalb displays enough talent to suggest she’ll do better in the sequel. Agent: Eric Myers, Myers Literary Management.

April 15, 2020
This first book in the Ella Shane cozy mystery series features a gilded-age opera singer who performs trouser roles, playing male characters as she tours with her traveling theater company. After a young woman playing Juliet to Ella's Romeo drinks real poison and dies during the final act of the opera, an English duke, the dead actress' cousin, arrives in New York. He seeks Ella's help in discovering what happened to his cousin because he doesn't believe that she committed suicide or was the victim of an accident. As Ella investigates Frances Saint Aubyn's death, she encounters some close calls and a growing attraction to the duke, which she denies because she thinks he would want her to give up her career if they married. Filled with period detail and well-drawn characters, including an intelligent parrot named Montezuma, this story provides a nice start to a series for those who enjoy feisty heroines in cozies with theatrical frames.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)