Upstaged by Murder * Grace Topping * Laura Bishop Mystery #3

When an ambitious community theater production in a historic Virginia town is upstaged by the sudden, backstage murder of its leading actor, an intuitive home stager must swap her design samples for a magnifying glass to clear her business partner's name.

The Story: Written by prominent, award-winning cozy mystery author Grace Topping, this high-energy third installment in the celebrated Laura Bishop Mystery series turns a local theatrical stage into an exceptionally sharp, fast-paced puzzle box. Topping masterfully balances interior design themes with classic, backstage theatrical drama.

The plot follows the intuitive Laura Bishop, who has successfully put down roots by running a boutique home-staging company. Seeking a creative outlet and a fresh marketing angle to expand her local business reach, Laura signs on to manage the set design and prop styling for a major community theater production. Her routine monitoring loops permanently fracture during a high-density rehearsal cycle when the show's difficult, charm-weaving leading man is found murdered backstage. The timeline hits a highly volatile crisis point when local detectives zero in on Laura's close business partner as their prime target, threatening to completely close down their staging firm's livelihood.Rather than letting the curtains fall on her future, Laura launches her own counter-campaign, using her behind-the-scenes access to sift through an incredibly dramatic suspect pool of jealous understudies, erratic divas, and disgruntled stagehands. Moving smoothly through historic theater wings, elegant prop storage rooms, and chaotic dress rehearsals, the plot weaves sharp humor with classic whodunit logic to keep readers guessing until the final curtain call. Published as a standout pacy whodunit by Henery Press, this charming mystery serves as an essential showpiece for amateur sleuth cozy shelves.

Perfect For: Devotees of traditional, fast-reading amateur sleuth mysteries and theater-themed whodunits like the works of Donna Andrews, Jane K. Cleland, or Ellery Adams; readers keeping pace with Laura Bishop's ongoing Virginia design ventures; and fiction lovers who appreciate tight-knit community dynamics, artistic settings, and pacy, page-turning drama.

Published April 2021 by Henery Press, stated First Edition.

Cozy Mysteries / Undercover Sleuth Whodunits / Theater & Backstage Whodunits / Small-Town Virginia Crime Fiction / Series Continuations