The Fate of a Flapper

Calkins’s winning sequel to 2019’s Murder Knocks Twice, likewise set in 1929 Chicago, finds cigarette girl Gina Ricci serving a rowdy crowd one night at the Third Door speakeasy. She takes particular notice of two young women, Fruma Landry and Adelaide , who receive the attentions of various men, not all of them welcome. The next morning, Gina gets a call from her police officer cousin, Nancy Doyle, who needs Gina, an amateur photographer, to take pictures of a dead body. The victim turns out to be Fruma, found by a neighbor in the apartment Fruma shared with Adelaide. Fruma’s purple, distorted face points to poisoning. Did she die from drinking tainted hooch at the Third Door? Or is it a case of murder? Gina, who’s suspicious of the stories Adelaide tells about the men in her late roommate’s life, winds up investigating. Period slang lends authenticity. Calkins draws a memorable portrait of Prohibition-era Chicago. Agent: David Hale Smith, Inkwell Management. (July)