The Gold Gamble

Somehow, the show must go on…

Norma Gold and her friend Pearl are co-producing a Broadway revival of Guys and Dolls , with the help of Maxwell Sapphire, who hasn’t had a hit in four years.

Alexander Gold and Burton Hanslik have invested $2.5 million in the show, so Norma and Pearl are under pressure to make it a winner!

There are always problems in the theatre.

And Sapphire is determined for his mistress, Lisa Terrane, to star in a role on which rests the whole show…

But Norma and Pearl force him to star an old school friend of Norma’s, Carol Sands, instead, but to placate Sapphire, Lisa Terrane is made Carol’s understudy.

Then, three days before the critics’ preview, Lisa Terrane is found cruelly murdered in her dressing room.

And Carol Sands is the only person on the floor at that time…

Burton persuades Lieutenant Warshafsky to hold off arresting his star until the critics’ preview night.

But it is made very clear that if Alexander Gold can’t solve the case by then, the show will have to close, taking with it Norma’s and Pearl’s dreams and all of Alexander’s and Burton’s money…

The night of the preview Warshafsky suddenly announces that he must arrest Carol at once and Alexander finds himself in a race against time to save Carol, the show, his wife, his money and his pride.

The Gold Gamble is an entertaining thriller with as much humour as suspense.

Praise for Herbert Resnicow

‘A gem: sparkling dialogue, a neat lock room puzzle… Read this!’ - Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine

‘Herbert Resnicow’s private eye, a new type, name of Gold, made me sit in awe when I wasn’t chuckling at the wit of this whodunit … Gold is a master of mind and matter and may his vibes increase in cases to come’ – The New York Times

‘A true original, unique, artful and very witty, with sharp, tart, delicious characters. First time a mystery made me laugh in decades’ – Harold Q. Masur, author of The Broker

'Resnicow writes brightly with bouncy humor. Norma and Alex are a likeable couple in the tradition of Nick and Nora Charles and Jerry and Pamela North.' – Jean M. White, Washington Post Book World

Herbert Reniscow was a civil engineer who began writing at a later stage in his life. Reniscow was born in Manhattan and served in the Army Corps of Engineers during WWII. He began his writing career with his first mystery novel, The Gold Solution , for which he earned a nomination for the Edgar Allan Poe award for Mystery Writers of America in 1984.