The book opens with the murder of Anna Harris' boss. It seems her boss had an extremely valuable notebook. One that she left for Anna. So Anna quickly heads out the door and quietly disappears to California, becoming newspaper reporter Irene.
Too bad she gets tangled up in another murder. Well, it actually seems to be a series of drownings. She finds an informant dead in the pool of a very exclusive pool, a pool that Irene herself has to swim across in order to get away from the murderer. So now there are two murders and we're barely three chapters into the book.
Overall, this was a fun book, very much a throwback to some of the early Krentz works that I adore. If you're a regular Krentz reader, I think you'll figure out the "twist" in the story. The pacing was a bit uneven with the beginning and ending being WAY fast while the middle was long and slower (not slow, just slow-er). I got an ARC so there were also a few anachronisms but hopefully those will be weeded out before the final book.
I really hope that we will see Ogden's secretary Raina Kirk getting together with Luther Pell, somewhat shady club proprietor, in a future book.
Three and a half stars (honestly, will probably be four once it's better edited but I can only judge what I read)
This book comes out May 9, 2017
Vivian Brazier is just trying to make a living as a photographer. It's an emerging field in the 1920s and very few people are making Art. She's making ends meet by being a photojournalist, taking pictures of crime scenes. And it's the latter job that brings her in contact with the person known as the "Dagger Killer." Her second sight when she uses the camera helps her capture nuances that no one else can see. When she becomes a target, a bodyguard is arranged.
Opening with our heroine, Amalie Vaughn, literally on the edge of death, Then it slips into a confusing third person omniscient overlook overlook of almost everyone in the book. It smooths out when Amalie gets to Burning Cove. She's picked up a mansion for a song. Too bad it's because a phony psychic was murdered there. And now that her first paying guest has also been murdered (on stage, by his own robot), she's not very hopeful that the profile of her hotel will improve. And now, Matthias Jones, a known associate of Luther Pell (night club owner and mob affiliate), is in her hotel. She just knows that the gossip is going to go wild.