Mr. Good-Evening
A Mystery
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- £14.99
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- £14.99
Publisher Description
The open-and-shut case of the Fatal Flapper just won’t stay closed in this thrilling and immersive novel of 1920s Vancouver—another Raincoast Noir mystery.
Miss Dora Decker doesn’t look like the sort of young woman capable of stabbing her stockbroker employer twenty-five times with her high-heeled shoe; yet, thanks to a slow news day, she has become internationally famous as the Fatal Flapper, and the police are only too happy to make the arrest.
Meanwhile, Ed McCurdy, former muckraking journalist, has traded his typewriter for a career reading radio news as Mr. Good-Evening, Canada’s first “radio personality.” As a celebrity he draws resentment and paranoia from far and near, and he worries that the next murder victim will be himself.
Inspector Calvin Hook scours the wet, boozy streets of gritty 1920s Vancouver, piecing together a mystery that somehow connects Al Capone, Winston Churchill and Brother Osiris, the leader of a mystical cult on De Courcy Island.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Gray's crafty third historical whodunit featuring Calvin Hook (after Vile Spirits) gives the Canadian police inspector his most intricate puzzle yet. In 1929, prominent stockbroker Ralph Tucker is found stabbed to death in his Vancouver, B.C., office. The police arrest his 20-year-old secretary, Doris Decker, and accuse her of goring Tucker with one of her spiked high heels, which was caked in blood and discovered near the corpse. Tucker's death becomes an international sensation, with Decker nicknamed "the Fatal Flapper" by the press, but Hook—who's known within the Vancouver PD as a contrarian—wonders whether his colleagues have rushed to judgment. His doubts grow after a conversation with his friend, radio journalist Ed McCurdy, who notes that the supposed murder weapon was well beyond Decker's budget, and that the office she'd worked in had plenty of other, more reasonable weaponry on hand. Hook and McCurdy's subsequent investigation draws their attention to a cult called the Aquarians of De Courcy Island, who believe the end of civilization is near, and who may have had their reasons for disposing of Tucker. Evocative period detail and a solid roster of red herrings enrich the familiar setup. This satisfies.
