Escape Artist

April 15, 2011

A much younger version of Edna Ferber, who already showed her sleuthing chops as a 70-year-old Pulitzer Prize winner (Lone Star, 2009, etc.), solves what's presumably her first case—with a little help from the other biggest celebrity to hail from Appleton, Wis.

In 1904, nobody in her hometown knows that 19-year-old Edna Ferber will grow up to be a playwright and novelist to reckon with. So although Sam Ryan, aging publisher of the Appleton Crescent, pays Edna $3 a week to retail the more genteel items of society gossip, he's inclined to take the side of her nemesis, bigoted new city editor Matthias Boon, who wants to grab Edna's story when she lands smack in the middle of a murder. The victim is schoolgirl Frana Lempke, 17, whose rumored liaison with an unnamed older man proved that she was no better than she should be and probably deserved to get strangled, even if nobody can figure out how she sneaked out of her closely watched school. As it happens, her death coincides with the visit of the celebrated Harry Houdini, who was born in Hungary but claims Appleton as his hometown. "All Jews are escape artists," Edna's blind father tells her, and indeed Frana and Edna's attempts to escape Appleton's stifling conventionality are worthy of Houdini. But because Ifkovic is determined to introduce readers to every citizen of the town, you don't get much chance to get close to any of the suspects, and the workmanlike whodunit serves mainly as a charming excuse to introduce Houdini to Ferber.

The biggest mystery, in fact, is what chapter in Ferber's eventful life is likely to furnish the basis for the next installment in this offbeat series.

(COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

April 1, 2011

Appleton, WI, native Harry Houdini periodically visits his old friends and as a favor agrees to perform at the town's theater. Local "girl reporter" Edna Ferber, herself chafing from the chains holding her back from her vaguely formed aspirations, befriends the renowned escape artist. When the murder of teen Frana Lempke rocks the town, it's Houdini who helps Edna understand the deceptiveness of appearances. Remembering Houdini's advice to use her "concentration and imagination," Edna unlocks the mystery of who wanted Frana dead. A clever case, yes, but it's Edna's coming-of-age story--she's a Jewish immigrant's daughter whose dreams don't seem to match her girlfriends' aspirations--that makes the book special. VERDICT The author does a fine job of writing a sequel to Lone Star, set at the opposite end of Edna's life. Stylistically, it's as if we're in Booth Tarkington country, with a leisurely pace and a society with clearly defined boundaries. A gentle read.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from May 1, 2011
Ifkovics first Edna Ferber mystery, Lone Star (2009), was set in the 1950s, during the filming of Giant, the movie based on Ferbers novel. In the second entry in the series, Ifkovic takes us a half-century further back in time, to 1904. Ferber is 19, a reporter for a Wisconsin newspaper. When a local resident dies under suspicious circumstances, she defies the orders of her antagonistic editor and investigates the crime with the help of an unlikely ally, Harry Houdini, who happens to be in town (he lived in Wisconsin many years earlier). This is a thoroughly charming mystery, and Ferber makes a wonderful sleuth. Only a nitpicker would even wonder how much Ifkovics version resembles the real woman, for the reader is entranced by her plucky spirit and sharp-witted investigative skills. Houdini, too, is a very well designed character. This isnt his first fictional appearance (Daniel Stashower wrote a series of novels in which Harry was an amateur sleuth), but its definitely one of his best, and if Ifkovic can manage it without overstretching the bounds of credibility, it would be great to see the escape artist and the girl reporter team up again. Who would have thought that, of all the real-life characters to have a second life as detectives, Edna Ferber, now largely forgotten as a writer, would emerge as one of the best?(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)