Knight Fall

Mark Savage is, at last count, the world's only movie-star-turned-private-eye, a man noted as much for his irresistible charm as for his highly attuned intellect. Now in his latest adventure, he attends a performance of King Lear at Stratford-on-Avon and discovers that "sharper than a serpent's tooth is...murder."

The visit to his old acting days' haunt is to be a pleasurable jaunt for Savage. Sir Gerald Grantley, an actor of legendary stature, as well as an old friend, is to play Lear--a long-awaited theatrical event. And Grantley lives up to Mark's expectations--and then some. His opening-night performance closes with twenty-one curtain calls. Yet a few hours later, Grantley is found dead, brutally impaled on a church-yard fence. Is it suicide, an accident...or murder?

When the actor's widow asks Savage to investigate her husband's untimely death, he finds himself facing a cast of dark characters--a crippled sculptress, an angry young producer, a sullen gardener, and an extremely chatty neighbor--as well as a Shakespearean plot where nothing is what it first appears.

But this is not the stage and the curtain cannot fall until the mystery is solved. And even for the likes of our man Savage, this is one detective role he won't want to play again...