Final Curtain

Aspiring actress Martha Virginia Brown was only twenty when she died in an apparent fall while appearing in summer stock in the North Carolina foothills. Now, fifty years later, her great niece and namesake, Ginger Cameron, arrives at the quaint tavern in Fiddler's Glen to unearth the forgotten details of her relative's death, and to escape the menacing overtures of a former boyfriend. According to those who knew her, Martha Brown was beautiful, talented, and full of life. She was also blatantly outspoken, and there are too many unanswered questions about the way she died. Some say it was an accident. Some say she was pushed. Others say she was a victim of the music played upon a fiddle by the ghost of a Confederate soldier--Lucifer's fiddle. But Martha's murderer proves much too real to be an apparition. Ginger soon learns the killer will stop at nothing to silence those who would expose the secret kept hidden for so many years, and she seems doomed to relive the fate of her late aunt. However, she doesn't count on the assistance of her aunt's sprightly spirit to lead her to the person responsible for her death, or on the love she has found in this unlikely place.

From Publishers Weekly

This charming mystery/ghost story, smartly plotted and deftly told, will delight fans of Ballard ( The Widow's Woods ) and win her many new ones. Back in 1936, a young actress named Dahlia Brown spent the summer with a drama troupe at the Plumb-Nelly Tavern in Fiddler's Glen, N.C., and came to a tragic end: her body was found in a ravine, the death attributed to a fall. Now, some 50 years later, her grand-niece, Ginger Cameron, has returned to the Plumb-Nelly at the insistence of Grandma Kate, Dahlia's sister, who has become convinced that the young woman was murdered and, nearing the end of her own life, desperately wants the case resolved. Though the trail is old and hard to follow, Ginger quickly discovers an ally in her investigation as the red-haired apparition of Dahlia Brown returns again and again to steer her in the right direction. Also on hand to lend support are love interest Rob Quillian, the tavern's piano player, and Eugenia Tyler Stafford-Smith, one of the inn's livelier senior residents. The closer Ginger gets to the truth, the more dangerous her quest becomes, and before long she herself is being pursued. Is the person responsible for Dahlia Brown's untimely death still alive--or just another specter out to keep an old secret buried for good? Readers will enjoy finding out. Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

Tepid romantic suspense from southern specialist Ballard (The Widow's Woods, etc.), who, this time out, sends Virginia Cameron to Fiddler's Glen and the Plumb-Nelly tavern/guest-house to discover what really happened 50 years ago to her grandmother's sister, Dahlia Brown. Naturally, Dahlia's ghost soon wafts by to drop clues--flower petals, for instance, that point to a scrapbook in the barn. Two men vie for Virginia's hand; an imperious dowager demands she make a fourth for bridge; and several old-timers offer differing stories about Dahlia and the acting troupe she was a part of. Now if only Virginia could find the old playbills.... Several scares later (car-brake tinkering/spooky phone calls/the death of a serving girl), Dahlia's murderer and Virginia are locked in mortal combat in the barn until a confession is pried loose and Dahlia drifts away in peace. Lacks the menace and sexual tension that are hallmarks of romantic-suspense, and not at all helped by a dull heroine, her two even duller suitors, and--a first?--a dull ghost. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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