new york is always hopeful

Writer Freddie Archer covers nightlife and fashion for Gotham magazine. It’s the 1920s in New York City, but Prohibition doesn’t stop alcohol from being big business. There are speakeasies and bootleggers all around. Especially around Freddie, as her column A Touch of Rouge takes her through the city’s nightlife to all the most fashionable places. She pays a price for it, in nights spent in her office writing her column and hangovers the next morning. But she also gets to spend time with the celebrities of the day.

While Freddie only gets to hang out with the Fitzgeralds every so often (usually when Zelda is getting her husband Scott in trouble, or giving him material for a new story), two of Freddie’s best friends are Dorothy Parker and Tallulah Bankhead. Freddie knows many famous people, from the writers who hang out at the Algonquin, actors and producers from Broadway, fashion designers, and club owners from her nights out on the town. And it’s one of those nightlife columns that brings the police to her office.

Detective Mike Sullivan shows up early after another morning Freddie had finished her column and then slept on her office divan. With a little help from her assistant Annie, Freddie makes herself presentable and allows the man into her office. He is kind, but he has questions. She had written in her last column about Jake Haskell, and Sullivan wanted to know anything Freddie knew about him. She explained how she barely knew him, and that she had seen him dining with a young woman the night she had written about in her column. She didn’t understand why a police detective would be asking about him, until Sullivan explained that he had been murdered.

Freddie doesn’t have much information to give the detective, but she does promise to call him if she ever sees the woman again. Getting over a broken engagement to a theater producer who wanted her to give up her job for a nice home in Connecticut, now Freddie is back to having to duck her mother’s calls for dinner and the “suitable” young man there to meet her and fending off unwanted advances

But that doesn’t stop Freddie from looking for that mystery woman, especially when the next time Freddie sees her, another bootlegger is killed. Through the heat of the summer in the city, run-ins with her ex, and flirtations with a new paramour, Freddie keeps looking for that woman. And as she finds herself getting closer to her, Freddie finds herself closer and closer to mortal danger.

Murder in Manhattan is a new book from Julie Mulhern, who also pens the Country Club mysteries. This new heroine, Freddie Archer is based on an actual writer from the 1920s whose nightlife column in The New Yorker was witty and arch. Part of the fun of this series is the closeness to celebrities of the day, from Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley to Groucho Marx, Tallulah Bankhead, George S. Kaufman, Ring Lardner, Alexander Woollcott, Arnold Rothstein, and F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald (although we just hear stories about the Fitzgeralds, we don’t get to meet them on the page).

I listened to the audio book of Murder in Manhattan, narrated beautifully by Caroline Hewitt. I thought she perfectly captured Freddie’s voice, from her intelligence to her quick wit to her flair for storytelling in her columns. There was some lovely jazz music at the start that brought me right to the time of the story, and I was instantly captivated by Mulhern’s writing and Heritt’s narration.

I love mysteries, but I do shy away from historical mysteries. I initially said yes to this one because I like Mulhern’s other books. But once I realized that Dotty Parker was hanging around so much, I was so happy I gave it a try. But as the story went on, it was Freddie who kept me engaged. She is such a strong character, a smart woman and compelling columnist, that I couldn’t stop listening if I’d tried. I love Freddie Archer, and I am all in on this series. I can’t wait to see who pops up next.

Egalleys for Murder in Manhattan were provided by Forever, and a copy of the audio book was provided by Hachette Audio, both through NetGalley with many thanks, but the opinions are mine.