Modern Noir

It is October, the haunted time of year. Trees triumphantly don their fiery-colored leaves in a last gasp of exuberance before they turn brittle and die. A derelict amusement park and musical strains from an offstage carousel heighten the feeling of season’s end. This play is set at Echo Valley, a mostly abandoned no-longer-fun fair. It is the site of a recent murder of a young woman, the kind of woman who wasn’t supposed to end up as a statistic.
This is a murder mystery that explores the rippling effects it has on the characters.
The story begins a couple weeks before Halloween and concludes the morning after trick-or-treating ends. While much of the action takes place at Echo Valley, the set converts to accommodate other locations, the corner of a bedroom, a slice of kitchen, a gala Halloween Masquerade Ball. Yet Echo Valley’s outline remains ominous over all the scenes.
The Angel of Death Rises Early casts its light on private investigator Isabelle McGuire. She must face her own private demons when she is hired to investigate the murder of another woman named Isabelle, the woman who was killed and discarded at the rusting shooting gallery. As McGuire is drawn further into the case, she begins to identify too closely with the other Isabelle, whose life had surprising parallels with her own.
McGuire shares her fears with her romantic partner detective Nick Gordon but only when he’s asleep. She doesn’t trust herself to confide in him completely when he’s awake. The dead Isabelle’s best friend and mother play on McGuire’s sympathies, but can she trust them? Her attractive new client has more than the investigation on his mind, and a mysterious-yet-oddly-sympathetic killer from out of her past compel McGuire to test her preconceptions about homicide. The investigation threatens her relationship with Nick as she tracks a murderer and reevaluates her own secret struggle with the Angel of Death.