A group of people are invited to the theater to welcome the new American Ambassador and his wife. They are able to secure the Royal Box and have refreshments with the principal actors between acts. Lady Laura Whitford and her daughter are escorted by an attaché with the American Embassy and a French count who are both interested in Lady Laura's daughter. The Ambassador from a Middle Eastern country tries to take the American Ambassador aside to talk about oil deals and political unrest in his country. The Ambassador's wife embarrasses herself with her crass manners and drinking. At the end of the night, one of them is dead and everyone is a suspect.

I liked that there are many different layers to the mystery. As the detective interviews each suspect, we learn that almost all of them had connections that they want to keep a secret. More than one lady is hiding a child born out of wedlock. There is a secret engagement that was broken off years ago, secret political deals that fell through, and several affairs that have been hushed up.

I thought the interview process, which took up half the book, was boring though. Just people sitting around talking; no action at all, just lots and lots of flashbacks. And the writing is unnecessarily verbose and long-winded. This book could have been half as long without losing anything.

There is also some profanity from certain characters during their interview. I could see how it was calculated to tell us something about that particular character, but it still annoyed me.

I didn't like most of the characters. They are all sort of mean and selfish. There are only two characters that I really liked, Hilary and Althea, and they are very minor characters with only a few lines. Some of the characters are downright nasty, and I just didn't care about their storylines.

Overall, an interesting mystery, but it was too long.