Brooklyn On Fire

Publishers Weekly 11/02/2015 Set in 1890, Levy’s engaging second Mary Handley mystery (after 2015’s Second Street Station) finds the neophyte detective working as a salesclerk at a Brooklyn bookstore, where an elegant Southern woman, Emily Worsham, seeks her out. Emily wants Mary to try to prove that John Worsham, her late uncle who died in 1870, was murdered. Soon drawn into the world of high society, Mary asks the snobbish Arabella Huntington, John’s widow, for permission to exhume her first husband’s body. Arabella is incensed, but her son, Archer, wants to know the truth about his father’s death. Wealthy George Vanderbilt, who followed Mary’s previous case in the papers, offers his assistance. To complicate matters, several seemingly unrelated murders point to Mary’s policeman brother, Sean Handley, as a suspect. Political machinations surrounding the eventual consolidation of Brooklyn and New York City lend additional interest to this charming historical. Agent: Paul Fedorko, N.S. Bienstock. (Jan.)