What I Tell You Three Times Is False

It’s been three years since PACKARD went off the air, and Sam Holt is still trying to disassociate himself from the character he had portrayed so successfully. But Zack Novak, his agent, had pushed him to take assignment: Packard, Miss Marple, Charlie Chan, and Sherlock Holmes searching for the cure for cancer. It was good public relations, it was a vacation on a tropical island, it was going to be fun.

Munro’s Island was the ideal location; a mysterious mansion (formerly the headquarters of a drug kingpin) was the perfect set. Even the violent storm cutting off the crew, cast, and guests from civilization was appropriate.

And so, too, was the murder.

Daphne Wheeler was dead. In a locked room. The most immediate suspect was Harriet Fitzgerald, who portrayed Jane Marple. They had had a fight at dinner, a bitter argument, a lover’s quarrel. It has happened before.

But Harriet had no reason to commit the next murder. As tar as anyone could tell, no one did. Maybe it had something to do with the drug smuggling that used to go on here. Maybe...

That was the problem. The only people who could be taken off the suspect list were the dead, and the only people who could do anything about the situation were tour actors. Four people who made their living pretending to solve crimes were now faced with a bitter reality: If they couldn’t put what they had learned about crime-solving to use, the next crime might be their own deaths.

And what if one of them the murderer...?