3½ stars.

an entertaining, cosy murder mystery with a fairly predictable solution. (the how was cleverly done, i thought, but the who and why were pretty obvious once you got halfway through the book – not that that's necessarily a bad thing, since the whole point was that the reader gets the same clues the main character does.)

i really enjoyed the theatre setting, and i'm looking forward to the next one, but i do hope the second book undergoes one more round of proofreading, since this one had surprisingly many typos and errors.

(also i was kind of holding out hope for bertie and hugh, but alas. maybe in the next one!)