Glitzy parties, sightseeing at the Statue of Liberty, and strolls through Central Park with Gladstone the bulldog… Lady Eleanor Swift is loving her first trip to the city that never sleeps, until she witnesses a murder!
After crossing from England on the SS Celestiana, Lady Eleanor Swift sets up her home-away-from-home in a lavish apartment in New York City. She is soon the toast of the town, with no high-class soirée complete without her presence. Of course, she drags her butler Clifford and Gladstone the bulldog along to every party too.
But when she witnesses the charming doorman of her building, Marty, knocked down and killed in a hit-and-run, she finds fashionable society suddenly closes rank. The only local detective interested in helping her find the culprit is street-smart beat cop, Officer Balowski.
Resolved to get justice for Marty and his family, Eleanor searches Marty’s tiny apartment and is shocked to find five rolls of banknotes tucked under the floorboards. Money talks, but Marty was struggling to make ends meet, so where did the cash come from?
The next day, wealthy entrepreneur and flashy philanderer Ogden P. Dellaney – a man Marty used to work for – is found dead downtown, miles away from his swanky Upper East Side mansion. Eleanor and Balowski are sure the deaths are connected, but not even Dellaney’s wife is willing to answer their questions.
Then Eleanor is served with an eviction notice and Balowski is fired from the NYPD. It becomes clear that something is rotten in the Big Apple and Eleanor is determined to get to the core of the mystery before the murderer strikes again…
Murder in Manhattan is a fun, fast-paced, and twisty Golden Age cozy mystery set in New York. Fans of Agatha Christie, T.E. Kinsey, and Lee Strauss will be glued to the pages.
My Rating:
Favorite Quotes:
I won’t tell ya some of the things I’ve heard over the years. Make your wig spin if I did.
Ogden was all mustard and no steak.
My Review:
Another lively, cleverly witty, and pleasantly amusing conundrum that the little pea in my brain was far from solving on its own. Lady Swift finds herself in serious peril more than once in this active and smartly paced adventure. I missed the involvement of her ever-patient policeman beau but the Lady has unwittingly assembled a rather surprising and diverse crew to pick up the slack, and she was in dire need of every one of them. Thankfully, Clifford, one of my favorite characters of all time, continued to be brilliant and always several steps ahead of everyone else.