Mystery

BEHIND THE PHANTOM'S MASK, by Roger Ebert.: Genre: Mystery; Availability: IP, try ordering it from your bookstore. Was serialized in the papers.; Rating:; Review: Behind the Phantom's Mask is just plain cute. You want cartoons? The nifty illustrations are an integral facet of this book, in which the characters are drawn with the wide brush of either cartoon figures or characters in a miniseries. Behind is a story of greed and the TV-movie business, and an outrageously funny satire of both; for anyone waiting for a Phantom movie, this book is a riot. It features as well a charming main character in the form of Mason Devereaux, the lead actor in Phantom at Her Majesty's. Mason happens to be an aging, alchoholic British actor with a tendency to get himself in the worst of predicaments. He also happens to have an iffy long-standing friendship with the fair young Sheila, who desires something more....but I'll let you read the book! ;)

A PHANTOM DEATH, by Annette Mahon.: Genre: Mystery; Availability: IP, try ordering it from your bookstore. It is an an Avalon Mystery, and the ISBN is 0-8034-9429-7; Rating:; Review: This book gets a score of 4, rather than 5, only because it really isn't a "Phantom book" in re-living the Phantom of the Opera story. A Phantom Death is a pleasant mystery starring the ladies of a church quilting bee as amateur detectives. The mystery at hand for Maggie and her quilting comrades is the murder of the lead actor of the tour of Phantom, a murder made the more mysterious because the actor was a hometown boy, raised alongside Maggie's own sons. Who would dare kill the Phantom on lands adjoining Maggie's, so near to her family home? Who would dare go against the power of the ladies of the St. Rose Quilting Bee? This is a fun, amusing read for mystery buffs and Phantom fans of all generations--these active senior sleuths are not described in a condescending or stereotyped manner, as is the case with so many literary references to older characters; and the book, while not focusing on Phantom itself, nonetheless indicates a clear love of the musical.