Free Love

October 4, 1999
Olivia Brown, the heroine of this launch of a new series from the author of the Smith and Wetzon novels (The Big Killing, etc.), is the "it" girl of 1920s Greenwich Village. "Inspired," as the galley copy reads, by Edna St. Vincent Millay, Olivia is cultivating a reputation as a bohemian poetess and a ravishing "good-time girl," with puppy-eyed artists and writers proposing marriage to her at every turn. But Olivia is staunch in her commitment to her heart and to her free-spirited lifestyle ("Stop, Edward. You know I love you, in my way. But it is I who would be morally dishonest if we stayed together"). Besides, she's preoccupied with discovering who among her devoted circle may be stalking her, and whether that stalker is responsible for murdering her "doppelg nger"--a transvestite made up to resemble Olivia, found in a soggy courtyard outside a popular speakeasy, his throat carefully slashed. When the police start asking Olivia impertinent questions, she turns to her tenant Harry Melville, a boozy PI with underworld connections and a limited vocabulary ("Bloody hell!"). Then Harry is attacked, presumably by the stalker, leaving the intrepid poet on her own to solve the apparently related crimes and to write her solipsistic, seemingly unironic poetry ("Abandon mind? There's no rebate/But death, who'll take us in mid-dance"). Meyers deftly evokes Prohibition Era Greenwich Village, a jittery, gin-soaked place infested with "romantic fever." But with its silly plot, interchangeable characters and pretentious dialogue, this series opener is as lightweight as the heroine's flapper physique. Agent, Stuart Krichevsky. Mystery Guild featured alternate; 3-city author tour.

June 1, 1999
In this new series, gorgeous, daring Olivia Brown, who's enjoying life in 1920s Greenwich Village, starts sleuthing when she stumbles upon a dead body on the way to the local speakeasy. Meyers's Smith and Wetzon series does so well in libraries that titles have been picked up for Baker & Taylor's print-on-demand Replica Books.

Copyright 1999 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 1999
It's 1920 in Greenwich Village: Olivia Brown, a newly published poet, moves to the house on Bedford Street that her great-aunt has left her, complete with the mysterious tenant on the first floor. Reveling in her freedom and her education, Olivia seduces and abandons, drinks and smokes too much, eats too little, and is periodically rescued by Mattie, the housekeeper and friend who lives with her. About to abandon an irritating lover, Olivia trips over a body; she is horrified when she finds out that the body is made up to resemble her and turns out to be male besides. That's not the worst of the strange doings that occur around Olivia, who finds time to hang out at the playhouse with Gene O'Neill, staring at the typewriter till the words come. Extrapolating freely from the life and times of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Meyers spins a rousing mystery rich in period color, even if the plot wobbles somewhat, just as Olivia does on the handmade shoes that furnish a clue. ((Reviewed July 1999))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 1999, American Library Association.)