First U.S. edition. A near fine copy in a near fine dust jacket. Slight spine lean. Rubs to the dust jacket's spine tips and some toning to its rear panel.

manda Boulder was rehearsing the solo she was to sing during the televising of the Country Music Awards. When the director called a break to readjust some shot angles, Amanda stepped aside to have a drink of water. The glass crashed to the floor and Amanda's hands were clutched to her throat-she began to heave convulsively. A few hours later she was dead.

Hilary Quayle and her assistant, Gene, are asked to take on the publicity for an extravagant production of Macbeth to premiere at Madison Square Garden's Felt Forum. Hilary had known the director many years ago in summer stock. Events proceed as usual in the theatrical world—a world fraught with the hectic, the impassioned, the absolute certainty that nothing will be ready by opening night, and the absolute drive to belie that certainty. And on the night of the technical/dress rehearsal all efforts seem to be paying off with a rather splendid production—until one of the corpses turns out not to be acting, and the gunshot during the blackout turns out to be no flamboyant anachronism. Hilary suspects "the play's the thing" and studies the text and old sourcebooks, her trail finally taking her to the Folger Library in Washington, D.C. Gene, meanwhile, pursues the problem in more traditional fashion. His investigations leads through New York's glamorous and less than glamorous theatrical circles. The conclusions and solutions they find will surprise everyone. Bullets for Macbeth is an exciting puzzle operating on several levels for the reader who enjoys good and intriguing mysteries.

“Who in hell are the Sons of the Desert?†Hilary Quayle asked. “We're an organization devoted to Laurel and Hardy films. Sons of the Desert is the name of one of the best of the Laurel and Hardy feature films.†But what Hilary Quayle’s secretary, Gene, didn't tell her was that women were not permitted to join the organization. When Hilary found out, she wasn’t pleased, so she crashed a Sons of the Desert meeting. She wasn't intending to stir up major trouble; she certainly didn’t expect to witness an on-stage murder. As always, it is Hilary who must solve the crime. Smart, independent, and enterprising, Hilary conducts her search for the killer in her usual methodical way. She takes the reader with her on a journey deep down into a show business netherworld that is rarely seen by outsiders. The characters in The Laurel and Hardy Murders include several real people—some of them celebrities—who are members of the society of film buffs founded by the late Stan Laurel as a parody of all fraternal organizations. Marvin Kaye, in real life the one-time president of the Sons of the Desert, recreates the outrageously rowdy atmosphere of the club, shatters it with a spectacular murder, and then leads the reader through the tortuous process of finding and apprehending the killer.

The plot of the popular daytime soap opera "Riverday" was melodramatic to be sure, but, as detective Hilary Quayle and her sometime lover Gene discover, it's not nearly, as tangled - or as deadly - as the drama its stars are acting out in real life.