Eleanor and the South Beach Murders (An Eleanor Roosevelt Mystery)
As temporary secretary, Kay Thompson accompanies Eleanor Roosevelt to a conference in southern Florida even as her heart remains in Washington, D.C. with her former fiancé. Meeting singer and World War II spy Geraldine Baker broadens Kay’s perspective on her life and life in the American South in 1951. Then a new friend is discovered in a locked room with a murdered victim and arrested. More bodies fall as Mrs. Roosevelt turns detective, as she had in a previous mystery: Eleanor and the Cold War.
This novel weaves historical circumstances with a mid-20th-century style murder mystery. Popular culture references both ground the tale in that time and round out the characters. The story develops much along the lines of a typical Agatha Christie mystery, including the revelation of the murderer’s identity. Yardley provides sufficient clues that discerning readers will suspect who is guilty before the denouement.
Yardley treats Eleanor Roosevelt and Geraldine Baker seriously, to the point of hagiography. Southern society of that era was quick to blame Blacks for crimes. The pervasiveness of the Ku Klux Klan shadows much of the story as the body count rises. Unfortunately, the story ends with the series regulars skipping out of town, escaping the aftermath of their pursuit of justice and leaving local Black people to bear the wrath of the aggravated Klan.
