Susanna Calkins (Murder Knocks Twice; A Murder at Rosamund's Gate) brilliantly captures the vibe of the Prohibition era in The Fate of a Flapper. Gina Ricci, a pretty but practical woman, is ostensibly a drugstore employee. In reality though, she's a waitress at the speakeasy in the basement. Gina, whose hobby is photography, has a quick eye for things that are off-kilter, and her suspicions are immediately aroused by a party that's drinking too heavily and flamboyantly one evening.
The next day, Fruma, one of the women who was part of the rambunctious group, turns up dead. It's an apparent cocaine overdose, but the dead woman lived next to Gina's cousin Nancy, a Chicago policewoman, who is determined to solve a murder in order to boost her status within the patriarchal department. Nancy talks Gina into helping her look a little further into Fruma's background, and the two women quickly realize that Fruma's death was no accident.
With a noir flair, balanced by Gina's no-nonsense attitude, The Fate of a Flapper is a delightful historical mystery, which can be read as a standalone although it is the second in a series. Calkins does an excellent job balancing hallmarks of the era--the flappers, the corrupt cops, the moonshiners and the stock market gamblers--with enough depth to make the characters truly absorbing. Fans of Rhys Bowen's Molly Murphy or Kerry Greenwood's Phryne Fisher will indubitably enjoy Susanna Calkins's Gina Ricci. --Jessica Howard, bookseller at Bookmans, Tucson, Ariz.