Murder in Midtown

Book excerpt: For fans of HBO’s The Gilded Age, explore the dazzling world of America’s 19th century elite in this lush, page-turning saga… In 1913, while the women’s suffrage movement gains momentum in the nation’s capital, the thought of a woman joining the New York City police force is downright radical, even if recent transplant Louise Faulk has already solved a murder . . . Louise has finally gathered the courage to take the police civil service exam, but when she returns to her secretary job at the midtown publishing house of Van Hooten and McChesney, she’s shocked to find the offices smoldering from a deadly, early morning fire. Huddled on the sidewalk, her coworkers inform her that Guy Van Hooten’s body has been found in the charred ruins. Rumors of foul play are already circulating, and the firm’s surviving partner asks Louise to investigate the matter. Despite a number of possible suspects, the last person Louise expects to be arrested is Ogden McChesney, an old friend and mentor to her aunt Irene. Louise will have to search high and low, from the tenements in the Lower East Side to the very clouds above the tallest skyscrapers, to get to the bottom of an increasingly complex case . . .