Staged, by John M Green

A gruesome death on stage at the Sydney Opera House provides an opportunity for a disgraced journalist to redeem his career. To do so he must re-establish a working relationship with the cop whose major case he undermined. Corruption, murder, Hollywood gossip, quirky characters, unlikely coincidences and an overabundance of adjectives make this contemporary whodunnit more of a farce than a genuine mystery. The humour is heavy handed and the multitude of characters are faintly amusing sketches rather than fully developed people. A short, brown female DI Harry Stiles – really? With three contemporary plots and an historic interlude that provides a twist at the end there is a lot going on, little of it credible. There are clever and funny elements but style dominates over substance.