The Weeping Woman

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating
Review: In 1925 Manhattan, former newspaper reporter Bedford Green enters his own art gallery only to hear his assistant crying. Since Sloane Smith never weeps, Bedford is very concerned and asks what is wrong and can he help? Sloane tells Bedford that her former college crony, Polly Swanscott has sent her a postcard from Paris that implies she is in trouble. Sloane asks Bedford to use his connections here in New York and when he travels to France next week to find and help Polly. Reluctantly Bedford agrees to do what he can.

Bedford begins making inquiries throughout the metropolitan area. He soon finds out that someone burglarized Polly's Manhattan apartment and that another thug killed that robber. He uncovers more information in New York and later on the ocean voyager and then in Paris, Bedford meets some author wannabees like Hemingway and Fitzgerald, but even with their help his efforts to save Polly from an unknown threat seem futile.

THE WEEPING WOMAN is an exciting historical mystery that brings to life Manhattan and Paris during the 1920s. The entertaining story line is fun as readers meet a twice-published Fitzgerald with Zelda, Hemingway, and Picasso. Bedford is a rock who supports the plot and the rest of the cast. No one will weep after reading Michael Kilian's enjoyable novel.

Harriet Klausner

Rating:
Summary: A sometimes confusing, slow moving story
Review: This is the story of a young woman upset because her friend is missing and she asks her employer, the protagionist of this book, to help her find her friend. The beginning is confusing because there seem to be too many characters to keep track of. Then the presence of jazz age celebrities would slow me down. I was not alive during the 20's, the setting of this book, but many of the real people put in as characters were still alive when I was young, Millay, O'Keefe, Picasso, Hemingway, etc. Each time one of these characters appeared it would make me pause and remember hearing about them in the past. Reading about a fictional character who is mentally disturbed is altogether different than reading about a character who was, in real life, a disturbed woman (Zelda Fitzgerald). 3/4 of the book was searching for a missing person - it wasn't until the last 1/4 that we learned of the murder and read its ultimate solution. The writing is good and younger readers might find the book more gripping than I did.