Murder at the Male Revue

Full of blue-haired humor, Perona’s overbusy third bucket-list mystery (after 2016’s Murder Under the Covered Bridge) takes Francine McNamara and the other senior ladies of the Summer Ridge Bridge Club to Brownsburg, Ind., for a performance of the Royal Buckingham Male Dance Revue. When the show is disrupted by the fatal stabbing of Camille Ledfelter, the president of Brownsburg’s town council and aunt of the revue’s owner, Francine and company are determined to uncover the killer and the motive. Ex-lovers and extramarital affairs all factor in, along with a healthy dose of blackmail. And when photos of an old family cemetery turn up among Camille’s office files, the ladies find themselves in imminent danger. The main characters are endearing to a fault, but the excessive amount of backstory makes it hard to follow who did what to whom. A subplot involving Francine’s discovery of a mysterious medicine labeled “no. 58” on property once belonging to her great-grandfather only adds to the muddle. (July)