Never Try to Catch a Falling Knife: A Lizzie Crane Mystery
This is the first of a new series, set in the Prohibition era, and it’s a promising debut, filled with plot twists, intriguing characters, and snappy dialogue. As I read this book, I kept imagining Barbara Stanwyck as the heroine, Lizzie Crane. Lizzie is just the sort of beautiful, brassy, self-sufficient character that Stanwyck often played.
Lizzie is a singer and actress, one of a four-person entertainment troupe until one of them—a handsome saxophonist and actor—is murdered. The three remaining Troubadors worry that they might be next, and Lizzie is determined to find out just who her colleague, Henry Ives, really was and why someone would to murder him. Trapped in a mansion in Ipswich, Massachusetts with a coterie of the rich and powerful, Lizzie begins prying into the secrets of the Winslow family, who are hosting the entertainments in honor of one daughter’s engagement to a count. Matters are complicated when Lizzie finds herself attracted to the dashing scion of the family, Peter Winslow, who has “tousled honey-gold hair and shapely calves” and a few secrets of his own. There’s also an Upstairs/Downstairs component to the story as Lizzie gets to know and comes to rely on certain of the house servants.
Rich with juicy historical details—especially the motorcars! —and surprising turns, this book should appeal to fans of Agatha Christie and Dorothy Sayers.
