MURDER IN MANHATTAN

Why do all journalists in early 20th-century New York get to party with the Fitzgeralds? Morris Markey squired Zelda to the scandalous Midnight Frolic in Mariah Fredericks’ The Girl in the Green Dress (2025), and now Freddie Archer, author of the Touch of Rouge column in Gotham magazine, pours herself into a taxi and goes off to frolic with Zelda and her husband at the Biltmore Cascades to escape the midsummer heat. Unfortunately, bootlegger Jake Haskell is murdered that same night, bringing NYPD Detective Mike Sullivan to the Gotham office while Freddie’s nursing her latest hangover. Sullivan asks Freddie to describe the woman Haskell was with at the Biltmore and to keep her eyes open during her nightly pub crawls. That she does, and she’s rewarded by witnessing an almost daily string of murders: at the Greenwich Inn (edgy bohemian vibe), King Tut’s (strictly for the butter-and-egg crowd), Club Monaco (ho-hum decor but fabulous music), and the alley behind designer Sophie Carmaux’s studio (gutter ambiance, smells like fish). Having thrown over fiancé Nick Peters for suggesting that after their marriage, they might move to Connecticut, she’s happy to meet Brandt Abrams, one of the few men she’s encountered who respects her taste for urban adventure. Mulhern gives Freddie a host of colorful characters to play off, but her spirited heroine is clearly the star of the show.