Seeing double

 

The scream was truly operatic, the tremendous splash less so.   Both were witnessed by Rose Madigan, adventure-prone journalist, who had seen, from behind her tinted sunglasses, the now floundering, spluttering female whose face she recognised as that of Italy’s best known soprano, being forcibly propelled into the swimming-pool by a slight but determined auburn-haired woman in her mid-thirties.

While others had rushed to the aid of the immersed, Rose had gone to stand beside the aggressor who, quietly voluble in her triumph, told her that Carmellina Contralta was not only a ‘scheming, double-crossing, adulterous bitch’ but also a thief and a blackmailer and thoroughly deserving of the drowning she was too obviously not going to suffer on this occasion.

Intrigued - and bored after two days’ sunbathing -  Rose befriends Alicia and becomes embroiled in an investigation whose life- and sanity-threatening intricacies rival the most wickedly convoluted of opera plots.

[150 words]

This is week #9’s response to Lisa Ricard Claro’s Book Blurb Friday challenge and Christina Claro’s intriguing photograph.   Each week Lisa posts a photograph which represents a book cover.   Participants are challenged to “Write a book jacket blurb (150 words or less) so enticing that potential readers would feel compelled to buy the book”   

http://www.writinginthebuff.net/p/book-blurb-friday.html