{"id":4014,"date":"2021-04-24T06:59:09","date_gmt":"2021-04-24T13:59:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4014"},"modified":"2021-04-24T06:59:09","modified_gmt":"2021-04-24T13:59:09","slug":"kathleen-marple-kalb-a-fatal-first-night","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/kathleen-marple-kalb-a-fatal-first-night\/","title":{"rendered":"Kathleen Marple Kalb: A Fatal First Night"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This is the second in Kathleen Kalb\u2019s delightful series about opera star Ella Shane, who is working in\u00a0 New York City in 1899.\u00a0 She and her cousin Tom run an opera company and live agreeably together in a large brownstone with Ella\u2019s parrot, Montezuma.\u00a0 These books have a really vivacious quality, matching Miss Ella\u2019s own.\u00a0 Not only is Ella a working woman in 1899, she sings men\u2019s parts \u2013 she\u2019s what was known as a \u201ctrouser diva\u201d.<\/p>\n

Her first nights tend to be problematic, however.\u00a0 In the first book, as she sang Romeo to her Juliet, Juliet was really<\/em> dead.\u00a0 In this book, though the stage portion of her new show goes perfectly, when she comes off stage she discovers one of her co-stars in his dressing room, covered in blood, a dead man at his feet.\u00a0 The gentle singer is hauled off to the Tombs and Ella tries to wrap her head around his guilt.<\/p>\n

This story has many interlocking pieces, all juggled (seemingly effortlessly) by the skillful Kalb.\u00a0 Ella\u2019s buddy Hetty, a reporter usually banished to writing about hats, is actually covering the murder trial of a wealthy New York matron accused of stabbing her husband to death.\u00a0 Ella\u2019s swain, the dashing Lord Leith, has returned from England for some mysterious purpose, but a large part of it seems to be to courting Ella. Ella, who adores her friends\u2019 children and has – feelings \u2013 for Gil (aka Lord Leith) is still torn about him, as she wants to maintain her career, not a common option for married women in 1899, on either side of the pond.<\/p>\n

And then there\u2019s her poor co-star, Albert, languishing in jail and insisting on his innocence. Along with Albert\u2019s arrest, there are also several disparate incidents that occur backstage or \u201ctheater adjacent\u201d that lead Ella, her cousin Tom, Gil, and their neighborhood buddy, now a mob boss in Five Points, to wonder who the real culprit is for the crime Albert is accused of, and how he or she can be caught.\u00a0 \u00a0The incidents, which include a fencing duel on stage that goes horribly wrong, seem to put Ella in danger and the men in her life are surrounding her with protection, much to her annoyance.<\/p>\n

As in the last novel, it\u2019s Ella who gets both the last word and the last lick and vanquishes her foe.\u00a0 She\u2019s planning to head to England after the conclusion of their New York run, as her show is booked in London, but what\u2019s left hanging is what to do about Gil, though the feelings they have for one another are never in doubt.<\/p>\n

Kalb writes with vivid assurance.\u00a0 Her stories are well paced and well layered.\u00a0 Ella\u2019s matrix \u2013 the characters who surround her \u2013 are as interesting and flawed yet human as she is herself., as is the theatrical setting. While in this novel the mystery part was about of equal importance to all the other things happening in Ella\u2019s life \u2013 mainly her romance with Gil \u2013 I didn\u2019t care a bit.\u00a0 This book is by a woman who knows how to tell a story.<\/p>\n

A caveat:\u00a0 these are well written and worthy novels, and the art on the cover is so egregious I feel I have to mention it.\u00a0 The art is cartoonish and makes the books look silly, which they are not.\u00a0 I hope the cover doesn\u2019t put any readers off (please don\u2019t let it) and I hope Kensington gives these book covers a little more thought going forward.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This is the second in Kathleen Kalb\u2019s delightful series about opera star Ella Shane, who is working in\u00a0 New York City in 1899.\u00a0 She and her cousin Tom run an opera company and live agreeably together in a large brownstone with Ella\u2019s parrot, Montezuma.\u00a0 These books have a really vivacious quality, matching Miss Ella\u2019s own.\u00a0 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[556,554,557,10,410,162,555],"class_list":["post-4014","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-1899-new-york-city","tag-a-fatal-first-night","tag-ella-shane","tag-historical","tag-kathleen-marple-kalb","tag-kensington-books","tag-opera"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4014"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4014\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4016,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4014\/revisions\/4016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}