Review by New York Times Review
POOR JUDGE CRATER. Famous for decades after his mysterious disappearance in 1930, he's mostly forgotten today, long ago replaced in the cultural consciousness (and joke book) by Jimmy Hoffa. But good crime stories don't stay buried, and Ariel Lawhon's new novel, "The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress," digs up the case of the so-called Missingest Man in New York and feasts on its bones. Joseph Force Crater was a New York State Supreme Court judge with snappy suits, questionable ethics and the face of Golda Meir. On the night he disappeared he went out to dinner with his lawyer and a showgirl. He was supposed to go to a play, but he never saw the curtain go up. Somewhere between the chophouse and the theater, the judge disappeared. His body was never found. The case became a national tabloid sensation, and not just because more and more people needed newspapers to line the interiors of their Hooverville shacks. This case was an à la carte menu of the era's social hot buttons: chorus girls, speakeasies, bootleggers, Tammany Hall corruption, nattily clad gangsters and irritating rich people. Lawhon populates her book with both real and fictional characters, practically all of them shady. The judge himself is a bit player, quickly dispatched. His wife, Stella, scrambles to protect her assets and reputation. His mistress, Ritzi, is under the thumb of a notorious gangster who will certainly kill her if he finds out she was with the judge that night. Crater's maid, Maria, is married to one of the detectives investigating the judge's disappearance, but isn't sharing what she knows. Each woman clings to a piece of the puzzle that, put together, could solve the crime. Constrained by the era and their circumstances, the three are smarter than their prescribed roles and itch for more, like actresses waiting out the run of a bad show. While the judge's sudden exit creates complications for each of them, it also creates opportunities. Stella feels it when she walks into the speakeasy her husband visited the night he went missing. "She could practically taste each chord change, that little pause in the air before she inhaled and then the new swell of music." She's seeking an audience with Owney Madden, a real-life New York gangster and owner of the fictional Club Abbey (in fact, he owned the Cotton Club), a location central to the book. Below street level, with embossed copper ceilings, red shaded table lamps and a heavy-browed bouncer who demands your password at the door, this speakeasy is the height of Prohibition chic. The skinny teenager singing onstage? That's Billie Holiday. Owney Madden makes an appearance in each of the women's lives, playing the part of the Big Bad Wolf. But there's more here than meets the eye. Lawhon has a gift for lean banter and descriptive shorthand. A showgirls' dressing room is littered with "Makeup. Trashy magazines. Cigarette butts. Stockings and high heels and underwear." But don't let Lawhon's straightforward style and narrative restraint fool you. This book is more meticulously choreographed than a chorus line. It all pays off. Clues accumulate. Each scene proves important. Everyone lies. Once the rabbit is out of the hat, everything takes on a different texture, reorganizes and makes sense. A second reading, like a second cocktail, is almost better than the first. "What is it with you and graveyards?" the maid's husband asks her at one point. "They fascinate me." "Dead people fascinate you?" "No. The stories they leave behind." CHELSEA CAIN'S next thriller, "One Kick," will be published in August.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [March 9, 2014]
Review by Booklist Review
In this tale of Jazz Age New York, Lawhon walks one of fiction's trickiest tightropes, creating a novel that is both genuinely moving and full of pulpy fun. It's 1930, and a corrupt judge has gone missing. Newly promoted police officer Jude Simon is assigned the case and hunts among the speakeasies, Broadway theaters, and wealthy apartments of New York, only to be blocked at every turn. He's stymied in particular by the three women in the judge's life: his jaded wife; his sly mistress; and worst of all, his frightened maid, who happens to be Simon's wife. The women's stories throw a harsh light on New York in the 1930s, when gangsters ruled the city and women were pawns in their games. The imagined events of the novel become even more poignant when the reader discovers that the story is based on the real-life disappearance of Joseph Crater and that most of the characters were real people, like the notorious madam Vivian Gordon and the vile gangster Owney Madden. It's a great story, told with verve and feeling.--Weber, Lynn Copyright 2010 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Lawhon's disappointing debut novel reimagines the 1930 disappearance of justice Joseph Crater, an unsolved crime that fixates armchair detectives to this day. Set among the speakeasies and society soirees of Jazz Age Manhattan, the story also winds its way through the cramped tenements of the Lower East Side and goes behind the scenes of Broadway spectaculars. One August night, Joseph Crater leaves Club Abbey, a speakeasy owned by notorious gangster Owney Madden, and is never seen again. There are rumors of political corruption and shady connections with the criminal underworld, but the story centers on three women in his life-his wife, Stella; his mistress, showgirl Ritzi; and his maid, Maria. The three of them, all severely affected by his disappearance, must deal with the unexpected consequences, while trying to decide if there is a chance that he might still be alive. Stella hides in her Maine vacation home to avoid being harassed by police detectives and journalists. Ritzi shoulders a grueling life that is nothing like the glamorous starlet's existence that she dreamed of. Maria, whose husband is a detective assigned to the Crater case, works on starting a family while managing two jobs. These women do everything they can to protect themselves and their families from the malevolent men who let nothing stand in the way of them and their money. A fascinating story, but rendered colorless by its lack of momentum and stock characters. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
Inspired by a real-life unsolved mystery, Lawhon (Eye of God) hauntingly reimagines the disappearance of New York State Supreme Court associate justice Joseph Force Crater. Plagued by rumors of Tammany Hall corruption, Crater stepped into a cab one steamy August night in 1930 and vanished. Three women in his life-cool, Chanel-clad Stella, his wife; leggy showgirl Ritzi, his mistress; and humble, part-time tailor Maria, his maid-posit possible outcomes. They all have secrets and a credible reason for revenge. The three voices are skillfully brought to life by Ann Marie Lee. VERDICT Recommended for readers who enjoy historical mysteries with a noir touch, though the author could have made more of the zeitgeist. End-of-book resources including the author's note were not recorded.--David Faucheux, Lafayette, LA (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Lawhon (Eye of the God, 2009) offers a fictional solution to the never-solved disappearance of New York Supreme Court Judge Joseph Crater in 1930, a headline story in its day. For 38 years, the judge's widow, Stella, makes annual visits to toast him at Greenwich Village's Club Abbey, the mobster-owned speak-easy frequented by Joe Crater in 1930. Dying of cancer in 1969, she invites Jude Simon, the detective assigned the Crater case, to join her and tells him what really happened. Cut to 1930: Joe cuts short his visit to Stella at the couple's Maine cottage to return to NYC alone after receiving a mysterious phone call. The Craters' maid, Maria, coincidently married to Jude, is cleaning their Fifth Avenue apartment when she walks in on Joe's mistress, a showgirl everyone calls Ritzi, naked in the conjugal bed. Joe warns Maria to keep her mouth shut before he and Ritzi head out. After having dinner with pal William Klein, Joe and Ritzi end up in a Coney Island hotel. When there's a knock on the door, Ritzi hides in a cabinet under the bathroom sink while two men savagely beat Joe before taking him away. She and Klein claim they spent the night together to give each other alibis when questioned. Stella returns to NYC briefly and finds a stash of money and documents that Maria knows Jude, of all people, placed in the Craters' bureau (but he doesn't know she knows). Stella hides from the grand jury when it convenes. Ritzi, newly pregnant, tries to hide from the mobster who controls her. Maria and Jude hide their secrets from each other. An author's note at the end explains who was real and who is fictional in the labyrinth of what ifs, but only Ritzi's story (she was real, but her storyline is imagined) carries any dramatic weight. There is some cheesy fun to be had here with Prohibition mobsters and politicians, but the plot and prose are pedestrian.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
