One of the things I most loved about DEATH OF A NEW AMERICAN, was the plot twist. We have an open window, with curtains swirling in the breeze. We have a baby on the floor, crying hysterically. And we have a dead body in the shape of the baby’s recently-murdered nurse Sofia.
On the face of it, it looks as if Sofia, a member of the Italian community of New York in 1912, has opened the window, thus allowing the murderer to enter. Because she is Italian, it seems probable that she knows the murderer, who has been accused of various kidnapping attempts of childen from wealthy families in the recent past. Therefore, she must be in on the organized crime gang, who wanted to kidnap Baby Freddie. And because the man at the window must have been her childhood sweetheart Sandro, she opened the window to let him in, before he murdered her with a gang-like flourish.
It all seems completely plausible. It is coherent, logical and makes perfect sense in the context that author Mariah Fredericks lays out for us.
But maid-turned-sleuth Jane Prescott is not so sure. And eventually, she finds out the truth, which turns out to be way more disturbing than a gang murder.
What makes this novel sing is the empathy with which Ms Fredericks writes about mental illness, and a woman’s lot in 1912 New York, at a time when they didn’t have the vote. We learn about what marriage was really like for all-too-many women. Far from being a wonderful adventure, one character finds her marriage to a larger-than-life man so exhausting, it drives her to despair.
If you have not met Miss Jane Prescott before, you are in for a treat. Her position as a maid allows her to know everything that happens in the household of her employers, and a good deal of what goes on in private amongst the households of their personal freinds. Although this is the second in the Jane Prescott series, you won’t have had to read the first volume A DEATH OF NO IMPORTANCE to enjoy this one.
