Free Love (Olivia Brown Mysteries)

Rating:
Summary: Different
Review: Annette Meyers delivers a wonderfully different mystery and an egregarious eccentric in the Flapper era poet, Olivia Brown. Olivia might not match Sherlock Holmes but the writing style of FREE LOVE is a delight and the plot satisfying. I enjoy quirky books, and FREE LOVE captures the Jazz Age's daring people, clothing and lifestyles. Looking forward to Olivia's next adventure in the series.

Rating:
Summary: Pretty good debut!
Review: Pretty good mystery set in 1920's Greenwich Village. Olivia Brown is a poetess whose fiancee was killed in WWI. She inherits a house in the Village, and, along with it, a tenant, Harry, a P.I. One night, she stumbles across a dead body that looks suspiciously like her, and she enlists Harry's help to find out what's going on.

Good depiction of flappers, Prohibition, and the Jazz Age. The character development was a bit shallow, and I hope the second book will improve on that. There's a lot of potential here!

Rating:
Summary: New York City in the 20's-- Booze, Bohemianism, and Mystery
Review: World War I has just ended. The men who are coming home have come, Prohibition is in place. Women have the Vote, bob their hair and are trying all of the new freedoms open to them including the right to pursue casual sexual liasons.

Olivia's fiancee died in the War, her remaining family killed by the influenza, finds herself the possessor of a house in Greenwich Village that had belonged to her Great Aunt Vangie. There she resides with her maid Mattie and her downstairs tenant, Harry Melville, a private investigator. She writes poetry successfully, drinks and smokes to excess and enjoys men with an almost frenzied heedlessness.

But one day while on the way to meet with some of her other friends she discovers a body lying in pool of water in the street. In the days that follow she receives threatening messages, Harry is beaten up in an alley and, as she tries to discover what is happening, a trail of deaths follow her.

There's one annoying moment when Olivia has a lapse of intelligence, other than that, the book does a good job of creating a believable picture of Jazz Age Greenwich village, from it's Irish gangsters to the Provincetown Players.