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MURDER ME NOW
by Annette Meyers
Mysterious Press, January 2001
$23.95
ISBN: 0892966955


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

We thought the Woodstock generation had invented free love and overindulgence in harmful substances, but they were just rediscovering a life their grandparents could have lived 50 years earlier if they were among the artists living in New York's Greenwich Village. Poet Olivia Brown is attending a winter weekend party of some of her bohemian friends in Croton-on-Hudson. The party, consisting of the hosts, Fordy and Kate Vaude, Dave Wolfe, "a Jew, dark and mysterious as a sheik", Paul Ewing, an instructor at Yale, Bunny Wilson, a Vanity Fair editor, his girl, Daisy, Adelle the nanny, and Harry Melville, a private investigator and Olivia's tenant-for-life in the house she inherited from her aunt Evangeline.

The gin is flowing and the party games are beginning to get nasty, so they all go to bed for the night. The next day, Adelle takes the children out for a walk in the woods. The children come running when their mother calls, but no nanny. Later, Olivia finds Adelle's frozen body hanging from a tree. When they get back to New York, Daisy hires Melville to find out what happened to Adelle and Olivia and Harry are off.

Annette Meyers meticulous research into the history of New York City glows beneath the surface details of this second novel to star poet Olivia Brown, living and working in Jazz Age Greenwich Village. Real people are mentioned, Lawrence Langner, the founder of the Theatre Guild, Jack Reed, the journalist who died in Russia during the revolution, Monk Eastman, the fascinating Jewish gangster. Some of the places mentioned still exist. Olivia is living the bohemian life of the times, smoking and drinking and loving indiscriminately.

Annette's Smith and Wetzon series is being reprinted. The Olivia Brown series is moving along satisfactorily. Now if only some astute publisher would reprint Maan Meyers series about the Tonneman family. Perhaps a Tonneman descendant and Olivia will cross paths in a future book.

From Annette Meyers: Incidentally, The Dutchman titles (the first five) are being reprinted in trade paper with new covers by Baker & Taylor (Replica Books) and can be found on Amazon. And the first six of the Smith and Wetzons are as well, by the same people.

Reviewed by Barbara Franchi, February 2002

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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