Free Love (Olivia Brown) - Softcover

Meyers, Annette

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0446609218 ISBN 13: 9780446609210

Publisher: Warner Books, 2001

Synopsis

In 1920s Greenwich Village, poet Olivia Brown revels in the freedom of her neighborhood, where artists, actors, and writers gather and romance isn't played by any rules. Olivia does as she likes, dresses as she likes, and loves as she likes -- until the night she trips over a the body of a dead woman. Olivia then finds herself on the trail of a killer bent on a most personal revenge.

About this title

About the Author:

Annette Meyers is the author of 8 Smith and Wetzon Wall Street mysteries, 2 Olivia Brown 1920s mysteries, a stand-alone suspense novel: Repentances, as well as short stories in many anthologies. As Maan Meyers, she and her late husband Martin have written 7 history-mysteries known at The Dutchman Chronicles and numerous short stories set in New York in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries. One of Annette’s short stories was included in Best American Mystery Stories, 2002. She was the 10th president of Sisters in Crime and serves on the board of the International Association of Crime Writers, NA. She is an arbitrator with the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority.

From Publishers Weekly:

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"Aa 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. (Oct.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Warner Books
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0446609218
• ISBN 13: 9780446609210
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 305