The Red-Hot Blues Chanteuse: A Viola Vermillion Vaudeville Mystery
In 1919, vaudeville singer Viola Vermillion arrives in San Francisco with her lover/pianist/songwriter Stu Wiley. Vaudeville has brought joy and frivolity to a society plagued by painful memories of WWI and the deadly influenza epidemic that followed it. Performers are lauded, even in the relatively shabby Pantages Theater where Viola and Stu land. Both are talented and hope to make it in the big time, as do many of their fellow performers. But early on, Stu is shot to death. Romance turns to mystery, and not simply of who killed Stu and why. Who was he?
Viola discovers how little she knows of Stu’s past, and the same is true for many of her fellow performers, whose backgrounds can be murky. The younger men are veterans of WWI, meaning, among other things, they’re good shots. The backstage life at the Pantages reveals both camaraderie and rivalry. One of the vaudevillians likely killed Stuart… unless someone from the outside carried a grudge.
Occasionally the point of view shifts to Jimmy Harrigan, Viola’s new pianist. She gives Jimmy the job because he’s so expert, but she has her doubts about him. Then comes a second suspicious death. Viola is also on a collision course with the munitions tycoon Thaddeus Rutherfurd, whose ambitions couldn’t be more different from those of vaudeville performers. Jimmy’s friend Erwin’s observation, “Clearly Viola was at the center of some ferocious storm,” applies to the book as a whole. This storm is rife with lies, disguised identities, secrets, flirtations, and at times manic intensity.
The Red-Hot Blues Chanteuse is a delightful, fast-moving story with constant surprises that gives an inside view of vaudeville, partway between a circus and a cabaret. The mystery of these murders is solved, but the ending is open-ended: this is the first of a trilogy.
