It’s blog tour time! Y’all come see what’s going on with Eleanor and Clifford in Murder in Manhattan, the fourteenth in the series by Verity Bright.
Synopsis:
Glitzy parties, sightseeing at the Statue of Liberty and strolls through Central Park with Gladstone the bulldog… Lady Eleanor Swift is loving her first trip to the city that never sleeps, until she witnesses a murder!
After crossing from England on the SS Celestiana, Lady Eleanor Swift sets up her home-away-from-home in a lavish apartment in New York City. She is soon the toast of the town, with no high-class soirée complete without her presence. Of course, she drags her butler Clifford and Gladstone the bulldog along to every party too.
But when she witnesses the charming doorman of her building, Marty, knocked down and killed in a hit-and-run, she finds fashionable society suddenly closes rank. The only local detective interested in helping her find the culprit is street-smart beat cop, Officer Balowski.
Resolved to get justice for Marty and his family, Eleanor searches Marty’s tiny apartment and is shocked to find five rolls of banknotes tucked under the floorboards. Money talks, but Marty was struggling to make ends meet, so where did the cash come from?
The next day, wealthy entrepreneur and flashy philanderer Ogden P. Dellaney – a man Marty used to work for – is found dead downtown, miles away from his swanky Upper East Side mansion. Eleanor and Balowski are sure the deaths are connected, but not even Dellaney’s wife is willing to answer their questions.
Then Eleanor is served with an eviction notice and Balowski is fired from the NYPD. It becomes clear that something is rotten in the Big Apple and Eleanor is determined to get to the core of the mystery before the murderer strikes again…
Murder in Manhattan is a fun, fast-paced and twisty Golden Age cozy mystery set in New York. Fans of Agatha Christie, T.E. Kinsey and Lee Strauss will be glued to the pages.
My review:
Here we find Eleanor, Clifford, Gladstone, and the ladies in the Big Apple. New York City! They’ve successfully made it across the Atlantic, Hugh has proposed and headed back to England, and Eleanor and company are set to enjoy a lovely holiday in America. But murder finds them when Marty, the jovial doorman for their apartment block, is run over in the street. The police aren’t inclined to pursue the matter, and the high society folks Eleanor is mingling with strongly encourage her to drop it.
But Eleanor’s strong sense of justice won’t let her leave it be. As she investigates, she comes up with more questions than answers. Why did Marty have a wad of cash stashed away? He couldn’t have made that much money as a doorman. But he used to work for the wealthy Ogden P. Dellaney, also found dead in mysterious circumstances the following day. Are the two connected?
Verity Bright gives us another lovely literary confection here! Bright portrays a New York where everybody – cops, doormen, chauffeurs – is on the take somehow. People warn Eleanor that the city isn’t kind to those who go poking their noses where they don’t belong (what, Eleanor do that? Perish the thought!). But she persists. And at least one officer of the law, Officer Balowski, is willing to help Eleanor search for the truth. For their troubles, though, Eleanor is evicted from her apartment and Balowski is fired from the force. How much farther will the killer go to warn them off?
Not only do we have the main mystery, but we also have the irascible Mrs. Melchum and her snooty cat, Catamina. Mrs. Melchum isn’t very kind to Eleanor, nor is she favorably inclined toward Gladstone (and who doesn’t love Gladstone?!). The interactions between Gladstone and Catamina are pretty funny. Cat, dog, you get the drift. What happened in her past to make her so bitter? Will she ever warm to Eleanor?
With the cast of charming regulars and new characters to love (or not), a high society setting in the Roaring 20s, and a mystery that leads the reader on a merry chase, Murder in Manhattan is a joy to read. Can’t wait to see what Eleanor gets up to next!
About the author:
Verity Bright is the pseudonym for a husband-and-wife writing partnership that has spanned a quarter of a century. Starting out writing high-end travel articles and books, they published everything from self-improvement to humour, before embarking on their first historical mystery. They are the authors of the fabulous Lady Eleanor Swift Mystery series, set in the 1920s.
Glad you enjoyed Murder in Manhattan – it was really fun to research and write 🙂
I can imagine! I would think any fiction set in a different time period would be fascinating, and putting characters in a setting different than their usual would add more fun to that.
Thank you for stopping by the blog!