Murder Me Now - Softcover
With Free Love, the debut novel in her wickedly diverting new mystery series Annette Meyers wowed readers as she deftly brought the sights and sounds or Prohibition Era Greenwich Village to exhilarating life. Now this accomplished author returns to the roaring twenties, as snow blankets the narrow Village streets and her irrepressible heroine, poet-cum-sleuth Olivia Brown, finds the gaiety of her days eclipsed by the shadow of a ghastly crime that hits much too close to home. MURDER ME NOW Happily ensconced in her Bedford Street brownstone, Olivia Brown is having the time of her life: writing sonnets and downing martinis, making conquests and making love. Indeed, she doubts that anything could tempt her away from her Village home until she succumbs to the lure of a house party in Croton that promises sparkling conversation, bucolic views, and plenty of free-flowing gin. Yet Olivia has barely arrived at the rustic farmhouse of Fordy and Kate Vaude, when the convivial atmosphere takes a decidedly nasty turn. Between the petty squabbles and the jarring silences, the backbiting and the broad hints of marital discord, Olivia can't shake the feeling that something is terribly wrong here. And then she finds the frozen corpse of the Vaudes' nanny, hanging from a tree. Clearly, the young woman was murdered, and yet as Olivia and her friend, private investigator Harry Melville, join forces to learn why and by whom, they uncover more questions than answers. And when it turns out that the mysterious nanny was not whom she pretended to be, Olivia finds herself rushing headlong into a mystery that will take her from the swank and sophisticated Yale Club to the smoke-filled lair of a bootlegger and into the menacing clutches of the gang known as the Black Hand. The deeper Olivia probes, the darker the threats. Surrounded by bold-faced danger and ominous smiles, she can't help but wonder: Is the murderer one of the thugs—or one of her friends? Lavish Praise for Annette Meyers "Annette Meyers writes of love and murder in old New York better than anybody." —Lisa Scottoline, author of Mistaken Identity "Entertaining... a unique amateur sleuth. Meyers's opening gamut will thrill... fans who will want more tales." —Midwest Book Review
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Review:
Olivia Brown (Oliver to her friends)--bohemian poet, advocate of women's rights and free love, and connoisseur of bootleg gin--has the unpleasant habit of stumbling across dead bodies. When she finds Fordy and Kate Vaudes' demure nanny, Adelle, hanging from a tree during a country house weekend, Olivia is sure suicide is the wrong assumption. After all, why would Adelle hang herself with a man's leather belt?
About the Author:
Back in Greenwich Village, Oliver and her housemate, private detective Harry Melville, plunge into an investigation that takes them from Oliver's gently gin- soaked literary world to an array of nefarious dens of iniquity. Adelle, it turns out, was Adeline Zimmerman, former Pinkerton detective; Daisy, one of the guests at that country weekend, was Adeline's sister; and both Zimmerman women were having an affair with Lester Nolan, the corrupt cop ("a wax model of a hero in human clothing") who's doing the commissioner a favor by looking into the murder. What (or whom) was Adeline investigating? What has caused the sudden tension between Fordy and Kate? And who, really, is Celia, the beautiful photographer who drifts in and out of Oliver's life like a bewitching muse?
As Olivia tries to trace a path through Village society (where everyone knows everyone else, and serial alliances and misalliances are so common that "It was like putting a light to a single match in a row of matches and watching one catch fire, then another, and another until the whole parcel was ablaze"), she finds herself rubbing elbows with an assortment of picturesque characters, from mobsters to authors. One of these charming individuals is a deadly threat--but which?
The novel is refreshingly free of glaring anachronisms, and author Annette Meyers has obviously done her research on Village literary life in the '20s. But Meyers is no Fitzgerald, nor even a Michael Cunningham. Though the novel preens itself a trifle ostentatiously on its periodicity, tending toward heavy-handed references to the Great War, it fails to capture the poignantly fragile glamour of the era, with its heady whirlwind of flappers, expatriate authors, and jazz and its haunting legacy of trench warfare, poison gas, and dislocated modernity. As long as it doesn't try too hard, however, the Olivia Brown series is a perfectly pleasant diversion, as amusing as--and less rigorous than--the Charleston. --Kelly Flynn
Annette Meyers is the author of 8 Smith and Wetzon Wall Street mysteries, 2 Olivia Brown 1920s mysteries, a stand-alone suspense novel: Repentances, as well as short stories in many anthologies. As Maan Meyers, she and her late husband Martin have written 7 history-mysteries known at The Dutchman Chronicles and numerous short stories set in New York in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. One of Annette’s short stories was included in Best American Mystery Stories, 2002. She was the 10th president of Sisters in Crime and serves on the board of the International Association of Crime Writers, NA. She is an arbitrator with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.
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- Publication date2005
- ISBN 10 0446610755
- ISBN 13 9780446610759
- BindingPaperback
- Rating
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