Cold Morning: An Edna Ferber Mystery

The little town of Flemington, N.J., provides the setting for Ifkovic’s intriguing seventh mystery featuring novelist Edna Ferber (after 2015’s Café Europa). There she and a glittering array of celebrities, including Damon Runyon, Dorothy Kilgallen, James Cagney, and Jack Benny, gather in early 1936 for the circus-like trial of Bruno Richard Hauptmann, a German-born carpenter, for the kidnapping and murder of aviator Charles Lindbergh’s 20-month-old son in 1932. The New York Times pairs Edna with New Yorker writer Alexander Woollcott, who share their barbed observations of the trial in sometimes labored exchanges. Though the public of the time view Lindbergh as a hero, he can be unpleasant in private. Edna is one of the few skeptical of Hauptmann’s guilt. Meanwhile, the strangulation of waitress Annabel Biggs and the arrest of bumpkin Cody Lee Thomas for her murder draw Edna away from the trial and, eventually, into a plausible alternative explanation for the Lindbergh crime. History buffs will enjoy this one. (Mar.)