The Opening Night Murder

Anne Rutherford is one of several pseudonyms used by Julianne Lee. In this first installment in a her "Restoration Mystery" series, we meet Suzanne Thornton. Born to a well-to-do merchant family, she loses everything when she is abandoned by her lover, Daniel Throckmorton, while pregnant with his unborn child. He heads for Europe with Charles II and stays there for 20 years without a word to Suzanne. With no alternative, she becomes a prostitute, but realizes, as  her son Piers gets older, that she must take him away from this life or risk him becoming a thief. First she joins an itinerant acting troupe and finds that she enjoys not only acting, but the troupe of fellow actors. When the troupe is disbanded by a raid of Cromwell's enforcers, she is once again on the street. Although Suzanne cannot imagine living without Piers, she sends him to a former suitor in Newcastle to be apprenticed as a coal merchant. She then becomes the mistress of penurious William Wainright, a Puritan. When Charles II returns from France to retake the throne in 1660, Wainright believes he will be persecuted by the new king and abandons Suzanne, saying he will flee to France. With the return of the King and his Cavaliers, former lover Daniel has also returned to London and now stands to resume his rights as Duke of Throckmorton. He is still married and under the thumb of his brother-in-law, however, so refuses to acknowledge Suzanne or their son. Desperate once more, Anne begs Daniel to loan her money to refurbish  the crumbling Globe theatre, where she plans to produce plays for the commoners. With the King's permission, he loans her the money, and Suzanne and Piers re-gather those of the acting troupe they can find and begin the task of rebuilding the theatre and their lives. But on opening night, in front of a packed house, a body drops onto the stage and dies from a crossbow wound. The deceased is none other than Suzanne's former patron, William Wainright. The area constable does not even bother to show up until the next morning, and refuses to investigate. However, pressure is brought to bear on Constable Pepper to find the killer and he decides Suzanne is guilty, even though witnesses place her elsewhere. As she is being taken to jail, Piers comes forward and confesses. Now Suzanne must find the killer or Piers will hang.
Rich with detail and a well-drawn protagonist, this historical mystery was a fun read. The author provides a note to indicate what was fact and what was fiction in her tale.