The Gold Pawn

Colorful characters and rich historical flavor buoy Chandlar’s frothy second Art Deco mystery set in New York City (after 2017’s The Silver Gun). In 1936, Mayor Fiorello La Guardia asks his 23-year-old aide and sleuthing partner, Lane Sanders, to help find missing Manhattan Trust Bank president Ted Hambro before news of his absence causes nervous investors to withdraw their money. Meanwhile, Lane’s boyfriend, NYPD detective Finn Brodie, is in Europe evaluating the threat posed by the recently resurfaced Red Scroll Network—a crime syndicate originally created to capitalize upon the chaos of WWI. When clues surface linking the Red Scroll Network to Hambro’s disappearance and the unsolved murder of Lane’s parents 13 years earlier, she realizes that the time has finally come for her to return to her hometown of Rochester, Mich., and confront the mystery of her past. The narrative occasionally sags under the weight of florid descriptions, irrelevant anecdotes, and superfluous setup, but the complex central puzzle will keep readers turning the pages. [em]Agent: Jill Grosjean, Jill Grosjean Literary. (Oct.) [/em]