A Habit for Death

Each year the nuns of rural St. Gilbert's College hire a city slicker to help with their summer theater festival. As the stage manager, Nicky has a lot to handle—a truly awful musical script, bickering school staff, a huge crush on the cute guy in the chorus but things are about to get a whole lot worse. Convent of Fear, the school's play, features a serial nun killer. When several cast members are murdered, the mystery moves from the stage to real life. With its suspenseful plot, loveable characters, and laugh-out-loud humor, A Habit for Death is one habit you won't want to break.

Escaping the heat and heartbreak of New York City for a summer in rural Pennsylvania sounded like the perfect plan to Nicky D'Amico. Little did he know that what began as a heavenly idea would turn out to be a hell of a job!

Each year the nuns of rural St. Gilbert's College hire a city slicker to help with their summer theater festival. As the stage manager, Nicky has a lot to handle—a truly awful musical script, bickering school staff, a huge crush on the cute guy in the chorus but things are about to get a whole lot worse. Convent of Fear, the school's play, features a serial nun killer. When several cast members are murdered, the mystery moves from the stage to real life. With its suspenseful plot, loveable characters, and laugh-out-loud humor, A Habit for Death is one habit you won't want to break.

Kirkus Reviews

A summer-stock stage manager stalks both a killer and a hunky actor. Controversy surrounds the St. Gilbert Summer Theatre Festival's upcoming production of the cheesy musical Convent of Fear, though the pickets outside the theater are likelier to increase the box-office take than shut down the production. Stage manager (and narrator) Nicky D'Amico, who pictured a nice getaway from the craziness of New York City in rural Pennsylvania, finds himself dealing instead with Benny Singleton, The Artistic Director From Hell, Benny's mean, precocious young daughter Olivia and a whole ensemble of neurotic characters. A flirtation with handsome cast member David Scott takes some of the edge off Nicky's stress. But nothing can calm the company when nun Sister Sally, who's portraying a murdered nun, drops dead at rehearsal. Toxic dust seems to be the cause. Sadness turns to suspicion when stuffy State Police Corporal Roberts begins treating her death as a murder. As the person responsible for sweeping the stage, Nicky finds himself a suspect. Can things get any worse? Yes, indeed. The uninvited arrival of Nicky's flamboyant friend Paolo (think Will & Grace's Jack to Nicky's Will), along with his passive/aggressive boyfriend Roger, stretches Nicky even further, but the couple's constant bickering certainly multiplies the camp-entertainment quotient. And they help him crack the case. The panache of theater director Zito's debut augurs well for a lively series.

Charles Zito (New York City) has spent most of his adult life in the theater, most recently as Executive Director of San Diegos Diversionary Theatre, the citys only theater company committed to dramatizing stories of the GLBT community. A graduate of Carnegie-Mellon University, the author currently lives in Manhattan where he is busy at work on the second book in the Nicky DAmico Mystery series. A Habit for Death is his first novel.