Olivia Redmond from Deadly Performance, A Deadly mystery, is visiting Ascroft, eh? today to tell us a bit about how the Second World War has changed her life.
Welcome, Olivia. I’ll turn the floor over to you –
Hi, I’m Olivia Redmond and I’m growing weary and bored with this war. I know other people have had it worse than me, but once my block of flats was bombed into rubble on May 10, 1941, the last day of the Blitz, I’ve had to live with my father. Given a choice between Hitler and my father, well, I’m still thinking about that.
It used to be that life was exciting. Before the war, I traveled for my assignments given to me by Sir Henry Benton, publisher of the Daily Premier London daily newspaper as well as Britain’s spymaster, Sir Malcolm Fremantle. Since the war began, I’ve gone overseas twice, once to Denmark just before they were invaded and once to Portugal, a neutral nation.
Now I’m stuck in London, which means, stuck living with my father. Sir Henry, in an effort to boost my morale, has sent me to work on a weekly called The Stage, edited by a friend of his. Simon Chapell is a very nice older man with a theatrical streak who wears loud vests and keeps the theaters of Britain humming by publishing who is putting on what play or revue, who is looking for theatrical talent, and what the needs are of the theatrical fraternity. The Stage is part help wanted ads, part voice for the acting profession reaching out to the government, and part cheerleader for the performances put on in plays and revues.
Of course, the only thing that would lift my spirits would be for Adam to get more leave from his training post somewhere in the north so he could spend more time with me. Not only do I love having him around, but my father adores Adam, so my husband makes a wonderful buffer between my father and myself. Unfortunately, no one has the power to send Adam to London more often, and so we have to make do with infrequent visits and frequent letters.
But since I’d been sent to report on the plays of the West End, I was the first one to realize something was wrong at one of the theaters. A play was being rehearsed at the Regent Theater called “Have You Seen My Mother-in-Law?” and starring audience favorite Marnie Keller. The first time I was at the theater, one of the actresses broke her leg on stage. Was it an accident, or had she been sabotaged?
Then Marnie told me of other acts of sabotage against the cast and crew of the play. Items that disappeared. Costumes that were destroyed in this time of shortage of costumes. When I told my boss, Si Chapell, about this, he told me to spend more time at the Regent Theater and see if there was a story behind all this bad luck.
I readily agreed. With broken bones, things at the Regent Theater had become more serious. If no one caught the perpetrator, accidents could get even worse and I wanted to stop it. Before long, however, things did get worse…
Thank you for sharing this with us, Olivia, and good luck to you and your author, Kate Parker, with Deadly Performance, the latest book in the Deadly mystery series.
Readers can learn more about Jade and her author, Kate Parker by visiting the author’s website and her Facebook page.
The book is available online at the following retailers:
About Kate Parker: Kate has long wanted to build a time travel machine. However, after several false starts, she gave up and created time travel by going back in time inside her books. Since she’s fond of murder mysteries, it is probably best that all of her travel is inside books or police from various ages would be hunting her. When not recreating old time buildings and fashions, she can be found with a modern computer and modern air conditioning in North Carolina with her daughter and a 115 lb. puppy who could just crash through any time barrier.
dianneascroft.com 