FREE LOVE

Aspiring poet Olivia Brown is the new heroine from the creator of Wall Street headhunters Xenia Smith and Leslie Wetzon (The Groaning Board, etc.). The time is 1920, the place Greenwich Village, where Olivia, along with her best friend and housekeeper Mattie, had moved two years ago after losing her fiancÇ in the war. A house had been left to Olivia by her great-aunt Evangeline, with the proviso that the ground-floor tenant remain as long as he chose. He turns out to be Harry Melville, a private detective whose services are badly needed in Olivia’s new life. Her poems are being bought by Vanity Fair; she has minor roles in the productions of the Provincetown Playhouse and has become a familiar face at speakeasies like Chumley’s. But all is not well. It’s in Chumley’s courtyard that she and boyfriend of the moment Whit Sawyer stumble over the body of a woman wrapped in a bloody blanket. The woman is a man named MacKey made up to look like Olivia. After our heroine is subjected to a series of ominous, anonymous threats, Harry uses a clutch of his tough street pals to watch over her and gets badly beaten for his trouble. There’s more to come before the unconvincing murderer is revealed. The plotting is overfancy and undermotivated, but the picture of Village life in the —20s rings true, and the poems are an unexpected bonus. If she survives her ever-present cigarettes and gin, Olivia will surely return.(Author tour)