Review by Booklist Review
ldquo;Police Hide Sugar Papa's Identity!" What a headline. Flapper Dot King has been murdered, and nearly $200,000 worth of her jewels and furs are missing. She was a wild child, and her glitzy lifestyle was supported by illicit deeds and an assortment of paramours, including millionaire John Kearsley Mitchell III, her Sugar Daddy. It is 1923 in a riotous Manhattan awash with illegal booze and beset by criminal syndicates and corrupt police officials and politicians. Daily News lead crime reporter Julia Harpman is on the case. Harpman interviews and investigates an amazing number of characters, including legendary NYPD detective John D. Coughlin and Dot's courageous maid, Ella, from Harlem, as well as gangsters and gigolos, showgirls and socialites. Julia is threatened and physically assaulted, but she perseveres. Her determination takes her all the way to the White House, then occupied by the unscrupulous and adulterous Warren G. Harding. Based on a confounding, never-solved true crime and featuring real-life figures, DiVello's latest offers readers all they need to reach their own verdict. The creator of the Mystery and Thriller Mavens Author Interview Series, DiVello will delight readers with this foray into fiction highlighting Julia Harpman and her remarkable career.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
New York City's Jazz Age comes roaring to life in this vivid mystery from DiVello (Where in the OM Am I?), which is based on a real unsolved crime. In March 1923, 27-year-old model and "gal about town" Dot King is found dead in her 57th Street apartment, and the murder becomes a tabloid obsession as the investigation stretches on for months. DiVello switches between four points of view: dogged reporter Julie Harpman, the novel's protagonist; detective John D. Coughlin; Ella Bradford, Dot's Black maid; and Frances Stotesbury Mitchell, daughter of one of America's richest men, whose connection to the case emerges gradually. While Julie and detective Coughlin drive the investigation, the story is strongest when it's focused on Ella, who moved from Jacksonville, Fla., to New York City to escape Jim Crow laws, or Mitchell, who starts out flush with pride in her position at the top of America's elite. These two women's lives are torn apart in very different ways by the lengthy murder investigation and relentless newspaper coverage. Despite some pacing issues in the first half, this kaleidoscopic mystery impresses with its thoroughness and poignancy. Fans of historical true crime and stories set in the 1920s will be rapt. Agent: Liza Fleissig, Liza Royce. (Aug.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
DEBUT In March 1923, Dot King, a scandalous flapper with multiple men in her life, is murdered in her apartment. The case remains unsolved, although a number of people have keys to it. Ella Bradford, Dot's Black maid, found the body, but she's afraid to say too much and call attention to herself in 1920s New York City. Inspector John D. Coughlin, commander of the Detective Division in Manhattan, thinks he has the killer, but he's stymied by the DA's office. Julia Harpman, the Daily News crime reporter, covers the case from the beginning, but thinks Coughlin is blinded by his suspect. Suspects include Dot's gigolo boyfriend and a mysterious Mr. Marshall, the pseudonym for Dot's sugar daddy. When he's identified, the case takes a turn influenced by social class, political influence, and corruption. Bradford, Coughlin, and Harpman take turns revealing the twists in this unsolved murder case. VERDICT Based on the true unsolved case of Dot King's death, this compelling novel is told from multiple viewpoints. The page-turner of a story with tentacles reaching from Broadway to the White House exposes the influence of money and power. Fans of true crime and true-crime podcasts will be hooked.--Lesa Holstine
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Who slew the Jazz Age party girl? This novel, based on a true story, investigates the crime. After poring over the New York Daily News of March 15, 1923, for the latest developments in the sensational Pettit-Wells murder trial, Ella Bradford catches a subway from her Harlem apartment to West 57th Street and her job as a maid to "Miss Dottie" King, whom she discovers dead in her luxurious bed. When ambitious News reporter Julia Harpman, who happens to be covering the Pettit-Wells trial on Long Island, learns of the murder of the flapper and sometime actress known as the Broadway Butterfly, she rushes to cover that as well. The official investigation falls to veteran Inspector John D. Coughlin, whose steel-trap mind recalls other brutal crimes on West 57th. Though it focuses on three protagonists who are all invested in solving the mystery, this tale is less a whodunit than a lurid crime story set in the Mad Decade and presented from multiple perspectives. DiVello shrewdly draws parallels between Julia's hardscrabble struggles in a misogynistic era and Dot's use of her sexuality to rise in society, and she crafts an intriguing relationship between Julia and Coughlin, prickly yet mutually respectful. Race and class factor into Ella's anxiety over her proximity to the crime, since she's Black and all the other characters are White. DiVello maintains a breakneck pace from one brief, datelined chapter to the next. Her pulpy, over-the-top prose credibly evokes the era's crime magazines, while her fidelity to the characters and the well-documented facts surrounding the unsolved murder give the story extra interest. Her meticulous care extends to a lengthy postscript tracking the subsequent lives of all those involved. A juicy Roaring '20s crime yarn set in red-hot Manhattan. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
