Hours after a successful performance as Hamlet in modern-day New York City, actor Jason Trembell is killed at the theater. The next morning, John Steinway, the director of the show, calls private investigator Matthew Hogan to ask for his help in finding the killer. Hogan accepts the challenge.
Hogan enlists the help of college acquaintance Kathy Russell, now an attorney at a New York law firm. Their relationship, which had been damaged in college, grows as they work together. With Kathy’s help, Hogan methodically uncovers and investigates clues by examining the scene of the murder and talking to people who may have even remotely played a part in the crime. He faces a rather tough obstacle in Sergeant Kovetsky, who has concluded for the New York Police Department that the death was accidental, but Hogan persists. He pieces together evidence he finds in the theater dressing room, the lingering scent of a woman’s perfume, and conversations with people who could be involved — other actors in the play, the coroner who examined the body, the theater janitor, the widow, the show’s producer, and Trembell’s attorney.
With each interview and revelation of more information, we realize that there are fewer and fewer suspects. Hogan and Kathy conspire to lure the killer to the theater; in a one-on-one psychological confrontation, the killer confesses.
At the end of the book, Hogan explains to Steinway and Kathy the series of events that led to Trembell’s death. Want to know what happened?
