The Dagger Before Me

Persephone 'Percy' Cole joins the ranks of other gumshoes such as Sam Spade, Lew Archer, and Phillip Marlowe. This five-foot eleven, full-figured gal has the same hard-boiled, take-no-prisoners attitude, but with a difference. She's a shamus with a wicked sense of humor and the mother of an eight-year old son. Halloween, 1942, finds Percy Cole backstage during the previews of the latest Broadway production of Shakespeare's Macbeth. There's double, double, toil and trouble when an actor falls from an overhead catwalk and breaks his neck. Only the latest in a series of catastrophes, his death serves to further fuel the lore and superstition surrounding the Scottish play and its supernatural force since the play's creation in 1606. With a shortage of 'man' power due to the war overseas, the desperate producer takes a chance on the female PI to save the show from closing. But everyone has their secrets, from the director on down to the lowliest spear thrower. One more murder and a near death scene for Percy, and she's not sure which is worse - that someone is trying to kill her or being foisted into the role of Witch Number Two. Armed with her noodle and a WWI German Mauser, Persephone Cole will make things right, because that's what lady dicks do.