Desert Spring

Claire Gray Mystery #3

by Michael Craft

After a long and successful career as a theatre director in Manhattan, fifty-something Claire Gray succumbed to a tempting offer to establish the theatre department at the new and very well funded Desert Arts College in Palm Springs. It has proven to be an exciting opportunity for Claire but now she's facing the end of her first academic year with a measure of melancholy. Not only is the spring production about to end but her student and clandestine lover, Tanner Griffin, is about to leave school for Hollywood. The person responsible - renowned producer Spencer Wallace - spotted Tanner in an earlier school stage production and signed him to a role in his next film, Photo Flash. Now with the closing performance of the spring production completed, the cast party at Claire's house promises to be a bittersweet affair.

What Claire gets, however, is more than she bargained for when, in the middle of the very crowded affair, Spencer Wallace turns up dead in Claire's pool. To make it worse, Claire herself is one of the most probable suspects - with means, motive, and opportunity to have committed the deed. But Wallace is a man with a past and a reputation - and there are far more than a handful of people with better reasons to wish him harm. Now, with time running short, it falls to Claire to figure out who is really responsible before someone else gets away with the crime and leaves her holding the bag.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published March 8, 2004

About the author

Michael Craft is the author of 20 published novels, four of which have been honored as finalists for Lambda Literary Awards. The first installment of his Dante & Jazz series, "Desert Getaway," was a 2023 MWA Edgars nominee for the Lilian Jackson Braun Award. The second installment, "Desert Deadline," was a Gold Winner of the IBPA Benjamin Franklin Award, as was his 2019 mystery, "ChoirMaster." In addition, his prize-winning short fiction has appeared in British as well as American literary journals. Craft grew up in Illinois and spent his middle years in Wisconsin, which inspired the fictitious small-town setting of Dumont, used in many of his earlier books. He holds an MFA in creative writing from Antioch University, Los Angeles, and now lives in Rancho Mirage, California, near Palm Springs, the setting of his current Dante & Jazz mystery series. In 2017, Michael Craft's professional archives were acquired by the Special Collections Department of the Rivera Library at the University of California, Riverside. Visit the author's website at www.michaelcraft.com.

Reviews

[Sherry · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael is a great story teller. I love the Clair Gray series