A New York City drama teacher risks her life to expose a potentially deadly public hoax in this โmost uncommon thrillerโ (New York Herald Tribune).
Olivia Hudson, a drama teacher at a Manhattan girlโs school, refuses to let her uncle John Paul Marcus play the role of dupe in a real-life revenge story. Uncle John is a beloved war veteran, a New York institution, and a hard-working philanthropist with an unimpeachable reputation. His mistakeโan honorable one, at thatโwas disclosing the financial chicanery of industrial heir Raymond Pankerman, and it could cost John his life.
ย
Raymond has staged the perfect crime, and the perfect frame-up, to destroy the old man. He has everything he needs: a failed and penniless playwright whoโd sell his soul if the price was right, a budding television starlet looking for a breakout role, and a susceptible public suckered into believing a supernatural swindle thatโs making headlines.
ย
As a good man is taken down by the outlandish claims of an โotherworldlyโ publicity-seeking beauty nicknamed the Dream Walker, Olivia refuses to stand idly byโespecially since she has the talent to outwit and outplay an actress at her own duplicitous game.
ย
Inspired by the mob mentality of the postwar McCarthy hearings, Charlotte Armstrongโs The Dream Walker (also published as Alibi for Murder) is both an ingeniously clever mystery of double-crosses and triple-twists, and a still-relevant cautionary tale about the irreversible consequences of tabloid journalism and the gullibility of the masses.