A GILDED REDWOOD COFFIN

The specter of death once again hovers over Val and Roddy DeVere in the seventh volume of Tichi’s Gilded Age mystery series.

It is the middle of the summer season of 1899 in Newport, Rhode Island. Society’s elites are enjoying their annual festivities, away from the heat of New York City and Boston. Valentine (Val) Louise Mackle, daughter of an Irish immigrant who made a fortune in silver mining, and Roderick (Roddy) Windham DeVere, scion of Manhattan’s upper-crust Knickerbocker crowd, have been married for almost four years, but society has yet to completely accept the veteran of Colorado mining camps as one of their own. Still recuperating from the couple’s last, almost fatal adventure, Val attends a grand event with trepidation. Her forebodings are validated when the couple meets with the host of the celebration, their friend Theodore (Theo) Bulkeley, who indicates that he has family troubles before he mysteriously disappears. The DeVeres receive a telegram: “Please Help. Reply Manhattan Club. Theo.” The next day, they depart Newport and head for their New York home. When they rendezvous with Theo, Val and Roddy learn that he believes that the ostensibly accidental death of his beloved cousin Judith Winthipp was in fact due to murder, and he fears her twin sister Phoebe will be the next to meet a violent end. Although the adventurous murder mystery is intriguing and full of twists and turns, it is Val’s (Tichi’s narrator) delightfully acerbic descriptions of the upper class’ strictly proscribed excesses and constraints that propel the narrative. Roddy, an attorney by profession, is a charming amateur cocktail mixologist who creates tempting new beverages; following the series’ tradition, recipes for each of his latest concoctions (which are in great demand in the era’s finer restaurants and watering holes) pop up throughout the novel. There are also plenty of compelling historical tidbits and abundant details about the development of Manhattan’s Upper West Side luxury apartments around the turn of the century, with the Dakota and its many accoutrements prominently featured in the story.

A fun beach read with a bit of tension and enjoyable, biting social commentary.