Mood Indigo

October 15, 2017
"BROADWAY BEAUTY STRANGLED" scream the headlines that ring in Christmas 1932 in this ninth case for novelist Edna Ferber (Old News, 2017, etc.). Edna, universally identified as the author of Show Boat even though she and George S. Kaufman currently have a new play, Dinner at Eight, running on Broadway, is at a party given by her friend Noel Coward when Belinda Ross, the star who's shot to fame in Tommy's Temptations, enters on the arm of Dougie Maddox, the show's backer. She's on hand when Cyrus Meerdom, the powerhouse producer who first discovered Belinda, calls her a harlot, and Belinda slaps his face. And she's one of the first people Coward calls when Belinda is found in a Times Square automat, strangled with Dougie's scarf. The police naturally arrest Dougie for her murder, but Edna, struck by his obvious lack of motive, can't ignore a more extensive roster of suspects: Tommy Stuyvesant, the skinflint bachelor who created Tommy's Temptations; Corey Boynton, the old Yale friend of Dougie's who doesn't seem to like him much; Buzzy Collins, the friend of Meerdom's whose biggest talent seems to be getting invited everywhere; and Belinda's brother, Jackson Roswell, who owns the theater from which stardom beckoned her. Warned by Dougie's imperious mother, Lady Maud Maddox, whose title is less authentic than her temper, to stay away from the case, Edna, urged on by her "reporter's heart and soul," her "gut instinct," and her friendship with Coward, who serves as her de facto sidekick, circulates among the cast, interpolating pointed questions into their endless rounds of brittle chatter, until a sudden brainwave produces a remarkably unconvincing solution. So many Broadway types that most of them never stand out in a crowd whose motto, as one of them puts it, is, "When you're rich, you can't afford to like anyone."

COPYRIGHT(2017) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from November 27, 2017
Set in New York during the winter of 1933, Ifkovic’s outstanding ninth mystery featuring writer Edna Ferber (after 2017’s Old News) opens at British playwright Noel Coward’s 33rd birthday party at his penthouse overlooking the East River. The guests, who include such celebrities as composer Irving Berlin and actor Leslie Howard, are singing Christmas carols when Dougie Maddox, the hapless scion of old Manhattan money, and his showgirl lover, Belinda Ross, enter the room and start to dance. When Belinda later turns up strangled in a Times Square Automat, many believe hot-tempered Dougie is the culprit. Edna sets out to prove his innocence. Many scenes crackle with tension—especially the confrontations between Edna and Dougie’s ferocious widowed mother, Lady Maud, with whom he lives in a Fifth Avenue mansion. Ifkovic adroitly squeezes huge amounts of research into the story, with glimpses of people in the arty New York scene as well as the poor on the streets. The novel’s main strength, though, is its vivid depiction of a country in crisis in the depths of the Depression.

Starred review from November 1, 2017
The latest Edna Ferber mystery, set in 1933, finds the writer now a literary celebrity, having written a string of successful novels and plays. Although the Depression has thrown much of the country into disarray, in some circles it seems barely to rate a mentionfor example, at playwright Noel Coward's birthday party, at which Edna is a guest. During the glitzy affair, a gathering of the wealthy and prestigious among the arts community, a nasty scuffle breaks out and leads to murder; Edna and Noel team up to solve the crime before a close friend is railroaded into jail. As entertaining as the previous Ferber mysteries have been (this eighth in the series follows Cold Morning, 2016), the presence of the genteel Coward playing the role of crime-solving sidekick ups the ante considerably. The verbal interplay between Edna and Noel sparkles like fine champagne, and the thrill of watching Coward playing amateur sleuth cannot be understated. Ifkovic sets the bar terrifically high for future Ferber mysteries, but it's probably a safe bet that he can meet his own challenge.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)