Final Curtain - Softcover

Ballard, Mignon F

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1933523697 ISBN 13: 9781933523699

Publisher: Bella Rosa Books, 2009

Synopsis

Aspiring actress Martha Virginia Brown was only twenty when she died in an apparent fall while appearing in summer stock in the North Carolina foothills. Now, fifty years later, her great niece and namesake, Ginger Cameron, arrives at the quaint tavern in Fiddler's Glen to unearth the forgotten details of her relative's death, and to escape the menacing overtures of a former boyfriend.

According to those who knew her, Martha Brown was beautiful, talented, and full of life. She was also blatantly outspoken, and there are too many unanswered questions about the way she died. Some say it was an accident. Some say she was pushed. Others say she was a victim of the music played upon a fiddle by the ghost of a Confederate soldier--Lucifer's fiddle. But Martha's murderer proves much too real to be an apparition.

Ginger soon learns the killer will stop at nothing to silence those who would expose the secret kept hidden for so many years, and she seems doomed to relive the fate of her late aunt. However, she doesn't count on the assistance of her aunt's sprightly spirit to lead her to the person responsible for her death, or on the love she has found in this unlikely place.

About this title

About the Author:

MIGNON F. BALLARD is the author of the Miss Dimple mysteries, along with mysteries featuring angelic sleuth Augusta Goodnight and "The War in Sallie's Station", a novel about growing up in rural Georgia during World War II. She lives in her hometown of Calhoun, Georgia.

From Publishers Weekly:

This charming mystery/ghost story, smartly plotted and deftly told, will delight fans of Ballard ( The Widow's Woods ) and win her many new ones. Back in 1936, a young actress named Dahlia Brown spent the summer with a drama troupe at the Plumb-Nelly Tavern in Fiddler's Glen, N.C., and came to a tragic end: her body was found in a ravine, the death attributed to a fall. Now, some 50 years later, her grand-niece, Ginger Cameron, has returned to the Plumb-Nelly at the insistence of Grandma Kate, Dahlia's sister, who has become convinced that the young woman was murdered and, nearing the end of her own life, desperately wants the case resolved. Though the trail is old and hard to follow, Ginger quickly discovers an ally in her investigation as the red-haired apparition of Dahlia Brown returns again and again to steer her in the right direction. Also on hand to lend support are love interest Rob Quillian, the tavern's piano player, and Eugenia Tyler Stafford-Smith, one of the inn's livelier senior residents. The closer Ginger gets to the truth, the more dangerous her quest becomes, and before long she herself is being pursued. Is the person responsible for Dahlia Brown's untimely death still alive--or just another specter out to keep an old secret buried for good? Readers will enjoy finding out.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bella Rosa Books
• Publication date: 2009
• ISBN 10: 1933523697
• ISBN 13: 9781933523699
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 224