Charles Paris

Charles Paris has landed a role in a lavish West-End musical. The star, one of England's most popuar comedians, is adored by the public but despised in the business. He also seems to be behind some strange happenings backstage, including the rehearsal pianist being shot in the hand and an actor falling and breaking his leg. Why would the star want to sabotage his own show? The playwright wants to strangle him. The leading lady longs to stab him in the back. The young Lothario looks at him with deadly rage. And unless Charles turns the spotlight on the real behind-the-scenes saboteur before opening night, murder will take top billing.

Charles Paris, middle-aged actor turned amateur sleuth, is vacationing at a small English seaside town. Irresistibly drawn to anything theatrical, Charles seeks entertainment at the local music hall and endures a series of not-so-wonderful vaudeville acts in the hope that the man given star billing will be worth watching. This performer, Bill Peaky, comes on stage with his electric guitar, grasps the microphone-and drops dead, due to faulty wiring of the stage equipment. It looks like an accident, but Charles is not so sure and starts to find out more about the people in the other acts on the bill: Janine, the pretty dancer who disappears; Miffy Turtle, Peaky's manager, a little too sharply dressed and too sharp altogether; Chox Morton, seedy and unduly nervous, manager of another act; Lennie Barber, one-time star comedian trying to make a comeback. The more Charles investigates, the more suspects turn up.

"I want you all out-gone-dead-exterminated!" Alex Household had cried when, after a lifetime of struggle, he lost the starring role in a new play to an actor who couldn't remember his lines. But did that mean that it was Alex who had shot the leading man dead during his climactic speech? Charles Paris, for one, could see many logical suspects, from the devious producer, to the gullible playwright, to the young starlet's overprotective mother. But before Charles Paris, our middle-aged actor-drinker-detective, could begin his investigation, he was in for a shock: the powers-that-be chose him as the new leading man. Finally, Charles would discover stardom-and what a dead man saw in the last moments of his life!

Simon Brett's oldest and most beloved character, Charles Paris, is back. Paris, the often out-of-work actor, has a good part, for a change, playing Sir Toby Belch in a summer festival production of Twelfth Night. But when the director takes ill and then Paris' friend in the production is the apparent victim of intentional food poisoning meant for Paris, it's not long until the bodies start to turn up. Paris is forced to deal not only with a wild young director whose idea of Shakespeare the bard himself would hate, but with a murderer in the production as well.

After a long period of 'resting,' life is looking up for Charles Paris, who has been cast in a new production of Hamlet. But rehearsals are fraught. Ophelia is played by Katrina Selsey, who won the role through a television talent show. Hamlet himself is also played by a reality TV contestant, Jared Root. But when the company reaches the first staging post of their tour, matters get more serious, with one member of the company seriously injured in what appears to be an accident, and another dead. Once again, Charles Paris is forced to don the mantle of amateur detective to get to the bottom of the mystery.