The time is 1920. The place is Greenwich Village, where food and wine are cheap, talk and ideas are rich, and love is free. This heady atmosphere has drawn actors, writers, and artists from all over, who call the winding streets of the Village home. It is here, amid the hot jazz and cool gin, that a free-spirited young poet, Olivia Brown, finds her perfect milieu. From an unknown relative, she has inherited a tiny house on Bedford Street. The house has a tenant in the downstairs flat with a life-time lease. A strange, nocturnal man by the name of Harry Melville, who is, of all things, a private detective. One snowy evening, as Olivia leaves the speakeasy Chumley’s, she trips over the body of a woman. Not only is the woman dead, but her face is shockingly familiar, for she bears an uncanny resemblance to Olivia Brown herself.
“Meyers deftly invokes Prohibition Era Greenwich Village, a jittery, gin-soaked place infected with romantic fever.”
—Publishers Weekly
“… Olivia is stimulating company and her Edna Millay-like poetry is a brilliant pastiche.”
—The Wall Street Journal
“ … Meyers spins a rousing mystery rich in period color.”
—Booklist
“… the picture of Village life in the ’20s rings true and the poems are an unexpected bonus.”
—Kirkus Reviews
