Deadly Spirits (A Mystic’s Accomplice mystery, 3)
This novel is the third outing in a series set in the Roaring Twenties featuring the mystic’s assistant, Maddie Pastore. While it doesn’t greatly affect this plot, having familiarity with the earlier novels would be helpful.
Maddie is recently widowed, courtesy of Chicago’s gangland violence, and with a baby to raise on her own, she manages to get by in being the shill, or shady assistant, to a medium, Carlotta. Maddie’s skills lie in investigating the background of customers so that when Carlotta conducts her seances she has enough private information to convince them she is genuine. It’s a form of fraud, but the good-natured Carlotta evades the law by doing the seances for free and requesting donations.
After a night out at a speakeasy, Maddie has just rediscovered her long-lost sister, singer Sophie Dale, only to receive a desperate call the next day from her husband, Sebastian, to say she has been arrested for murder, the victim being wealthy hotel owner Nick Bardo. The cops think it’s an open-and-shut case, but Maddie doesn’t believe them and starts her own investigation. Before long, she is side-tracked with a separate unrelated murder of a young woman and a potential terrifying clash between the two big mobsters, Al Capone and Hymie Weiss. Helping her through the maze is Alice Clement, Chicago’s first female detective, who is determined to “do whatever it takes to help Chicago’s young girls… even when they’re dead, it’s never too late.”
Although not quite legit herself, Maddie is a likeable heroine, and the atmosphere of 1920s Chicago is scintillating and authentic and features many of its famous real-life characters. A most enjoyable Jazz Age cosy crime caper that flows as smoothly as the bootleg liquor.
