An atmospheric, red herring–strewn mystery that deftly captures an era’s angst and ambition.
In 1919 San Francisco, a vaudeville singer with secrets investigates the murder of her pianist and lover in this historical crime novel.
New Jersey native Viola Clark, in her late 20s, is thrilled to see her act, “Viola Vermillion—Red-Hot Blues Chanteuse,” listed on the marquee outside San Francisco’s Pantages Theater. She performs with Stu Wiley, the talented songwriter who accompanies her on piano. Stu has become her lover during their travels together as part of a 13-act vaudeville troupe touring the West Coast. But Viola is surprised to see that Stu wears her gun and has $75 in his money clip. Shortly thereafter, she is shocked to find Stu shot dead by her gun in the theater balcony and the money and “the red leather notebook I’d asked Stu to safeguard for me” gone. She learns from a local police detective that her lover is the long-thought-deceased son of Alcatraz’s lighthouse keeper, with a body identified as Stu’s having washed ashore in 1915. Viola proceeds to probe the puzzles of Stu’s past, including his entanglements with folks still on Alcatraz and the troupe’s female impersonator headliner and the flirty female half of its dance couple. Viola also deals with her rising attraction to Jimmy Harrigan, her replacement accompanist. Unbeknown to her, Jimmy, a hired missing-person’s expert, has been tracking Viola for months in the belief that she is an East Coast munitions tycoon’s runaway wife. Another troupe member’s death eventually leads to the unexpected killer getting caught in a snowballing cover-up. Later, the arrival of the tycoon via his private rail car turns into a violent showdown.
This mystery series opener from California-based author Brazil immerses readers in the bright lights and colorful world of vaudeville while shading in darker, noirlike aspects of its players, era, and setting. Vaudeville details, such as the maneuvering to secure the best time spot on stage and the inclusion of unusual acts (in this case, one featuring “French Poodle Acrobats”), prove essential to unraveling the whodunit plot. Several characters are also recovering from World War I–era trauma. Jimmy feels badly about his journalist friend, the Army medic who stepped in front of a bullet for him, since “the shot that tore through Erwin’s upper arm...probably made every keystroke on that typewriter a misery.” Viola was recently released from an East Coast sanatorium, after having nearly died of influenza. She is angry about the deadly munitions factory explosion that the police concluded was done by “Germans.” A particularly striking and touching moment is when several troupe members put their military uniforms back on for a special performance on Neptune Beach, presented as a “a thank-you to the army boys who came home last week.” Brazil also includes several effective misdirects involving the investigation of Stu’s murder. The growing bond between Viola and Jimmy is also well developed, whetting interest in their future adventures, which will certainly come with complications.
An atmospheric, red herring–strewn mystery that deftly captures an era’s angst and ambition.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2023
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 374
Publisher: manuscript
Review Posted Online: Aug. 23, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.
A young woman’s experience as a nurse in Vietnam casts a deep shadow over her life.
When we learn that the farewell party in the opening scene is for Frances “Frankie” McGrath’s older brother—“a golden boy, a wild child who could make the hardest heart soften”—who is leaving to serve in Vietnam in 1966, we feel pretty certain that poor Finley McGrath is marked for death. Still, it’s a surprise when the fateful doorbell rings less than 20 pages later. His death inspires his sister to enlist as an Army nurse, and this turn of events is just the beginning of a roller coaster of a plot that’s impressive and engrossing if at times a bit formulaic. Hannah renders the experiences of the young women who served in Vietnam in all-encompassing detail. The first half of the book, set in gore-drenched hospital wards, mildewed dorm rooms, and boozy officers’ clubs, is an exciting read, tracking the transformation of virginal, uptight Frankie into a crack surgical nurse and woman of the world. Her tensely platonic romance with a married surgeon ends when his broken, unbreathing body is airlifted out by helicopter; she throws her pent-up passion into a wild affair with a soldier who happens to be her dead brother’s best friend. In the second part of the book, after the war, Frankie seems to experience every possible bad break. A drawback of the story is that none of the secondary characters in her life are fully three-dimensional: Her dismissive, chauvinistic father and tight-lipped, pill-popping mother, her fellow nurses, and her various love interests are more plot devices than people. You’ll wish you could have gone to Vegas and placed a bet on the ending—while it’s against all the odds, you’ll see it coming from a mile away.
A dramatic, vividly detailed reconstruction of a little-known aspect of the Vietnam War.Pub Date: Feb. 6, 2024
ISBN: 9781250178633
Page Count: 480
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 4, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2023
PERSPECTIVES
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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