“Realistic characters, natural dialogue, well-integrated historical detail and a surprise twist ending mark this as superior mystery fare.”—Publishers Weekly STARRED review

To think of Chicago in the 1930s is to conjure up pictures of the Chicago Outfit and its earlier crime lords like Capone. Even the storied history of the Cubs or of the city's merchant princes and philanthropists can't quite shake the city's gritty image.

It's time for a new look. And here it is, a mystery with a warm family of widowed mother and four daughters at its core. Elodie, the Browne family bread-winner, lacks direct experience with crime, but she's full of curiosity, sharply observant, and nobody's fool. So when a man stumbles into a party given by a Chinese importer of jade and antiques where she is working «for a lark—and extra cash” and utters a dying word—mingdow—she begins to connect the murder with some odd doings in the office building where she works, events that began one night when the elevator door opened on the wrong floor….

Holly Baxter