“Michelle Cassidy, stabbed tonight outside the Susan Granger Theater, where she is rehearsing-ironically-a play about a man who stabs an actress.” And the name of the play is the name of this book!

As for the book itself, there is WAY too much information about the play! Rehearsals, receipts, writing, directing - on and on. I felt like there was more written about the play than about the murder investigation, and I read these books for the latter!

I also don’t read these for stories about dating, which is what the second plot line is. Bert and Sharyn. First date, second date, phone calls, etc. Bored me to tears.

I think this may be the first 87th Precinct novel in which I didn't like either plotline. Still, the first one of forty-seven... that's a pretty good run! ( )

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I’ve been powering through the 87th Precinct books in the last couple of months, having read 11 of them in quick succession, with only a few other things thrown in. I think that’s a pretty good measure of how enjoyable they are, and how McBain manages to stick to his central formula, whilst still making each book distinct and fresh. Having not taken the time to write a full review of one of them for a while, I thought I’d pause to consider this one in a bit more depth.
Many of the other recent entries which have multiple threads woven together. The last book ‘Mischief’ certainly did that, with a couple of mysteries (graffiti artists being murdered and old people being abandoned), a tense hostage negotiation storyline with Eileen Burke, plus the Deaf Man making an appearance. ‘Romance’ is far simpler, just one mystery and a character based sub-plot about Bert Kling’s relationship with police surgeon Sharyn Cooke.
The mystery is a really fun one concerning an actress receiving death threats and then being stabbed. The twist being that she’s in a play about an actress receiving death threats and then being stabbed. McBain does a great job with this, giving you just enough information to make you feel like you’re one step ahead of the cops, when in fact you aren’t at all. I found the denouement a tad less thrilling than it might have been, but it’s still a very entertaining read. At over 300 pages it’s a longish entry in the series, but he still manages to keep it gripping.
The sub-plot about Kling and Cooke is also good, with McBain exploring the challenges of being a mixed race couple in 90s America. The handling of the subject isn’t always as deft as it might have been, but it’s still thought provoking and credible in its romantic suspense. I’ve really enjoyed the ongoing character-based storylines that have run over the last few books, and the Kling/Cooke one is no exception to that.
Throw in the normal McBain highlights – cracking dialogue, humour and lots of digs at Hill Street Blues and you end up with a treat that any fan of the books will enjoy.
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Not one of his better ones. A play called Romance is being produced in which a character is pursued by a knife-wielding stranger, and then the actress is stabbed in an alley. Attack or publicity stunt? Then she is actually killed. The 87th Precinct gets to work, with the help of Fat Ollie Weeks. Meanwhile, Bert Kling continues to pursue Sharyn Cooke, a black cop-surgeon, with both wondering about the consequences of dating across races. More romance. ( )

If this book had been set in a less cosmopolitan place than New York City (ok, the story is actually set in a fictional city modeled on NYC, but in one dialogue the author even forgets that his novel is not in NYC and has a character say he's in Manhattan) or if the story was set in the 1950's, 60's or 70's, it might have fit better. As it was...
This novel is structured around the investigation of a stabbing and some murders surrounding a play which is itself about a stabbing. There are spots where this fractal plot structure seems to confuse even the author, but it was a clever idea even if it didn't work out as successfully as the author had hoped. I really disliked the writing style in this novel, and played a lot of 'where/how would I edit" while reading this one. The dialogue segments are far too long, putting the reader in the story as a fly on the wall not just for important bits, but for the entirety of many conversations. The point of view in this book shifts occasionally in ways that come across as problem spots the editor missed, rather than clever uses of POV-switching. And then there's the race stuff.
McBain seems intent on cashing in on the demand for greater diversity in popular fiction. In this book, while all the detectives and beat cops are male, the assistant DA is female, and the female love interest is not only a cop of sorts, but she in fact outranks the guy she starts dating during this story. There were still only a couple female characters in the novel, but for a 1995 crime/police procedural novel, this one showed some promise. The love interest is also Black, and therein lies some of the biggest weakness of this novel.
I do know some 'people of color' so hung up on the color of their own skin that they seem unable to interact with anyone of a different skintone without bringing up race as an issue. So, to be fair, Sharyn's character in this novel is not all that far-fetched, and her concerns about dating a White man could be realistic, even for a woman in NYC in the mid-90's. But, through out the book the authors attempts at race awareness lend a very awkward tone to the novel, as if the author is trying to be politically correct while sneering at the concept and at those concerned about it. In fact, near the end of the book the author's narrator breaks into a rant that seems more of the author's POV than part of the novel, ranting about people who are oversensitive and about the term 'ethnic', etc. There are readers in the US now, obviously, who would appreciate the perspectives in the undertone of this novel, but many modern readers may find this book irritating.
And, a quibbling note, early one in this book the male cop Bert Kling is gushing about the lovely Sharyn, and talks about her 'modified Afro' as making her look like a proud Masai woman. Well, Masai women traditionally have more-or-less bald heads. Maybe in 1995 Americans weren't paying much attention to different cultural traditions in different parts of Africa, or maybe the editor for this novel liked the word Masai better than whatever the author originally wrote. In any case, it was a bad start for this novel with respect to race.
If you want to read an attempt at fractal or nested storytelling, this novel does a pretty decent attempt at that, but I suspect many modern publishers would want a few more rounds of editing if this manuscript came their way in its current (1995) form.
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This book has the best written dialogue I think I've read.

I've read many 87th Precinct novels before but this one just struck as incredibly well written.

The plot of a play inside a play inside a book is nicely done as well. ( )