{"id":833,"date":"2012-11-01T13:39:26","date_gmt":"2012-11-01T19:39:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=833"},"modified":"2012-11-01T13:39:26","modified_gmt":"2012-11-01T19:39:26","slug":"p-m-carlson-audition-for-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/p-m-carlson-audition-for-murder\/","title":{"rendered":"P.M. Carlson: Audition for Murder"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Jim Huang\u2019s publishing imprint is re-issuing P.M. Carlson\u2019s enjoyable series featuring Maggie Ryan, which begins with Maggie as a student at a small, upstate New York college.\u00a0 The college is staging Hamlet<\/em> and has decided to bring in some \u201creal\u201d New York actors to play the main parts, with the students filling out the rest of the cast and supplying the crew.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>Carlson is an \u201cold school\u201d cozy writer \u2013 at times, the situations she is writing about aren\u2019t so cozy, and the world she is writing about, while it has a hook (in this case both academia and the theater), what she\u2019s really interested in are\u00a0 the characters and their relationships to one another.\u00a0 This series fits nicely next to Sharyn McCrumb\u2019s Elizabeth McPhearson books or Nancy Pickard\u2019s long lived Jenny Cain series.\u00a0 There are eight books in this series, with Maggie growing from a young student into a woman, but this first one almost embraces her naivet\u00e9.<\/p>\n

They are also set in what is now a long ago time period \u2013 the students she writes about are living through the Vietnam War, and maintaining an academic deferment is important.\u00a0 They are the passionate creatures you would imagine them to be, and it\u2019s paired with their very believable day to day college life.\u00a0 While the war is on the back burner, it\u2019s a hovering presence, though what\u2019s occupying the students in this story is Hamlet.<\/em><\/p>\n

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After reading the book I badly wanted to re-read Hamlet, <\/em> which speaks to the lively and compelling way Carlson tells her story.\u00a0 Part of the interest comes from the New Yorkers brought in \u2013 Nick O\u2019Connor and his lovely but troubled wife, Lisette.\u00a0 The scenes of Lisette\u2019s troubles with drugs seem pretty contemporary, and Nick wants to get her away from a bad environment \u2013 despite a good job offer \u2013 and out into the hinterlands where she can recharge.<\/p>\n

As Lisette has been given the role of Ophelia, there are some hurt feelings amongst the college ing\u00e9nues who wanted the role, making the initial entry of the \u201cNew Yorkers\u201d an awkward one, though many of the hurt feelings are soothed both by Nick\u2019s appealing personality and by the fact that Lisette makes a stunning Ophelia.\u00a0 The students learn lots from the New York actors, as they watch the way they prepare for their roles and absorb Shakespeare\u2019s words and interpret them to the best of their ability.\u00a0 This really highlights the intellectual side of acting, though it\u2019s also paired with the instinctual.\u00a0 As with any art form, it\u2019s the right mix that provides the magic.<\/p>\n

As the play progresses \u2013 Maggie is running lights \u2013 the cast and crew begin to gel, though there are bumps and hurt feelings along the way.\u00a0 When a real disaster strikes and everyone must pull together to get the show on the boards, the true personalities of all the characters are revealed in a moment of stress and working together.\u00a0 When the inevitable death comes, the aftermath is tinged with very authentic grief.<\/p>\n

Carlson\u2019s resolution is properly \u201cmysterious\u201d, and she\u2019s laid out fair clues throughout the text for the reader to follow.\u00a0 As she gets her own mix of the intellectual and the instinctual right, the result is a pretty magical one.\u00a0 This is a very enjoyable first in series book, and it makes any reader look for the next one in the series.\u00a0 Happily there are eight of them to look forward to.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Jim Huang\u2019s publishing imprint is re-issuing P.M. Carlson\u2019s enjoyable series featuring Maggie Ryan, which begins with Maggie as a student at a small, upstate New York college.\u00a0 The college is staging Hamlet and has decided to bring in some \u201creal\u201d New York actors to play the main parts, with the students filling out the rest … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-833","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-americancozy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833","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\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=833"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":835,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/833\/revisions\/835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=833"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=833"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=833"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}