Clarion, for unspecified reasons, drops her lawsuit, but on an unannounced visit to a performance is suffocated anyway with a plastic bag. Furthermore, Diamond is saddled with Sergeant Dawkins, a vulgarly dressed, loudmouthed pendant who keeps volunteering for more work. His task is complicated by the actors’ ability to act innocent the theatre management’s romantic proclivities and financial woes the appearance of the grey lady (the resident theatre ghost) and the dreaded sighting of two dead tortoiseshell butterflies, which according to theatre lore presage tragedy.

Battling a lifelong fear of theatres, Detective Peter Diamond ( Skeleton Hill, 2009, etc.) steps in to sort out matters. Disfigured from the caustic drain cleaner someone added to her face powder, Clarion decides to sue the theatre, a catastrophe only slightly diminished when Denise, who applied Clarion’s makeup, commits suicide in remorse. Clarion Calhoun is rushed to hospital, her understudy goes on and the production is put in serious jeopardy. The curtain has barely gone up when the pop star hoping to resurrect her glory days by switching from singing to drama begins to scream and tear at her face. Backstage hugger-mugger at Bath’s Theatre Royal.

Stagestruck peter lovesey