Murder on Fifth Avenue

March 26, 2012
At the outset of Thompson’s fine 14th mystery set in late 19th-century New York City (after 2011’s Murder on Sisters Row), NYPD Det. Sgt. Frank Malloy receives a summons to Manhattan’s exclusive Knickerbocker Club, where member Chilton Devries has been found stabbed to death in a chair. Most of the victim’s surviving family members treat the news of his demise with indifference, save Devries’s daughter-in-law, who laughs exultantly. While Felix Decker, a high-ranking officer of the Knickerbocker, wants the truth, if the guilty party is a fellow club member, he’ll handle things discreetly, permitting an arrest only if the murderer is not from the upper class. As always, the detective is aided by Thompson’s most impressive creation, Decker’s fiercely independent and capable daughter, Sarah Brandt, who supports herself as a midwife. Newcomers as well as old fans will find this an intelligent and engrossing look at society and its hypocrisy. Agent: Nancy Yost, Nancy Yost Literary Agency.

May 1, 2012
An upper-class midwife and an Irish Catholic police detective continue their unlikely alliance in a seventh murder investigation. Sarah Brandt defied her wealthy family to marry a doctor and become a midwife. Now a self-supporting widow, she has good relations with her parents but is still very surprised when her father, Felix Decker, calls upon her friend Detective Sgt. Frank Malloy to solve the murder of a fellow Knickerbocker Club member. When Chilton Devries was found dead at the club, his death first seemed to be by natural causes. But a small stab wound in his back proves that he was murdered. Malloy is not welcomed at the Devries mansion, but between his talks with the servants and the calls Sarah and her mother pay on the not overly sad widow, they manage to dig up some promising leads. Devries had a mistress; he spent the night before his death with her; his son and daughter-in-law hated him; and he had a number of business enemies. As if all of that weren't enough, he tried to get a Mafia Don to murder his daughter-in-law's mother. Behind the facade of wealth and high society lurk some very nasty secrets. In turn-of-the-century New York, where police have little interest in arresting the wealthy and well-connected, it will be up to Malloy, Sarah and her father to find the killer and decide how to discreetly punish the perpetrator. Thompson (Murder on Sisters' Row, 2011, etc.) once more weaves the class differences and casual bigotry of the period into a mystery with some neat twists.

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May 1, 2012
Midwife Sarah Brandt comes from one of New York's oldest families. Her father, Felix Decker, who is very conscious of his position in nineteenth-century society, finds it hard to accept the fact that Sarah has chosen to live independently and become friends with an Irish Catholic police detective. When a member of his club, the exclusive Knickerbocker, is found dead in the building, Felix does not hesitate to call Detective Sergeant Frank Malloy to find out what happened as discreetly as possible. Malloy soon learns that the deceased, Chilton Devries, was no gentleman, despite his club membership. His dysfunctional family, business associates who were cheated, and a few other interesting characters all despised him. Of course, Sarah ends up helping Malloy because of her access to the upper crust, but the two soon discover that Felix Decker is evaluating more than Malloy's investigative abilities. This is a strong series that deals with topics that are as timely now as they were at the end of the nineteenth century. Sarah's fans will eagerly await the next case to see what develops between her and Malloy.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)