When Elizabeth Bentley slunk into an FBI field office in 1945, she was thinking only of saving herself from NKGB assassins who were hot on her trail. She had no idea that she was about to start the greatest Red Scare in U.S. history.
Pick a scare. Any scare. Trick cards, floating scarves, disappearing doves. Tim Swanson loves magic tricks. Someday he wants to be a real magician. Just like his all-time favorite hero, Amaz-O. But then Tim goes to Amaz-O's show. And he finds out his idol is a total grump. That's when Tim decides to steal the bag of tricks. Amaz-O's bag of secret tricks. Scary tricks. Like the one with the multiplying red balls. And all those hissing snakes....
Dead Men Scare Me Stupid is an adventure of Frank Burly, the world's most dimwitted, yet likeable, detective. In this adventure two of his former clients, who are not-so-coincidentally deceased, come to haunt and torment him from beyond the grave. The most devious of their actions is framing Frank for many unexplained crimes. The story takes off from there and doesn't stop. Even Amelia Earhart's body makes an appearance. Yep, that's right.
Edinburgh and the Festival are both background and foreground with Charles, flitting between a re-visualized Midsummer Night's Dream, a mixed-media satire, a late-night revue, and his own one-man show on Thomas Hood-and with a fading pop star as the first victim, a bomb scare in Holyrood Palace, and a suicide leap from the top of the Rock. Charles copes splendidly with the Festival, with his affair with the girl with the navy eyes, and with a most complex murder investigation.
Eddie is constantly being outdone by his classmate Courtney who demonstrates that she is far braver than he is. Eddie plays a series of practical jokes on Courtney that all backfire and serve to further demonstrate her superior bravery. In his final effort to scare Courtney, Eddie and his friends dress up like mud monsters, but before they can sneak up on Courtney, real mud monsters sneak up on them and scare them away.
