Theatre Secrets — the third Lucy Harford Narrowboat Mystery — is now available from Amazon here in ebook and paperback.

A Victorian playhouse. An amateur dramatic company. A painter who sees more than she’s meant to.

When former police constable turned narrowboat painter Lucy Harford moors The Curious Cat in the canal basin at Stavewell — accompanied, as always, by her ginger cat Sir Meows-a-Lot — she’s expecting nothing more than good light and interesting architecture. A heritage commission to document the town’s crumbling Victorian playhouse gives her access to the building’s beautiful interior — the original ironwork ceiling, the backstage spaces, the fly gallery where ropes and counterweights hang in the darkness above the wings.

She arrives in time for opening night. The Stavewell Players are preparing their most ambitious production yet — a new play by an ageing playwright who knows it may be his last. The company is talented, passionate, and carrying more secrets than any of them will admit. The brilliant director who controls everything. The actress who needs him and resents him in equal measure. The young newcomer whose talent threatens the old order. The wardrobe mistress who has spent decades in the shadows of a building she knows better than anyone.

Then someone dies on opening night, struck by a counterweight from the fly system above the stage. The police read it as a terrible accident. Lucy’s drawings say otherwise.

Theatre Secrets is a mystery solved through observation, not interrogation. Through an artist’s eye for what belongs where and the specific, quiet skill of a woman who draws what is there — and discovers that what is there tells a story no one else could read.

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Getting this one across the line has meant more to me than the previous two books. I enjoyed writing Scarecrow Secrets and Hidden Secrets — but Theatre Secrets is the book where I feel I have found Lucy’s voice and also my own. Lucy is finally, fully herself on the page. That took three books to achieve. I suspect I needed the first two to understand who she was.

Where to Start

If you’re new to the series, welcome. You can begin with Theatre Secrets — it’s written to stand alone — but if you’d like to walk into Stavewell knowing Lucy a little better, Scarecrow Secrets and Hidden Secrets are also available.

If you’ve been here since the beginning: thank you. Genuinely. The Kindle Unlimited page reads, the downloads, the reviews, the emails — they are what kept this going. I hope Theatre Secrets rewards your patience.

A Small Request

If you read the book and enjoy it, a review on Amazon makes an enormous difference for an independent author. Even a line or two. It helps other readers find Lucy – and Meowsey.

Thank you, as always, for reading.

P. Thompson