Last Call at the Nightingale

Author Schellman (the “Lily Adler Mysteries”) is back with a new series about The Nightingale, a hip and carefree speakeasy in Jazz Age New York City. Vivian Kelly dances to escape her troubles–she’s an Irish American orphan who lives and works with her straitlaced sister, both barely earning enough at the dress shop to survive. When Viv discovers a dead body outside the club’s back door, others think she saw the murderer, and soon she’s engulfed in a tangled mystery of local rumrunners, Chicago gangsters, secret pregnancies, and entitled aristocrats. Open-minded Vivian isn’t sure whom to love or trust–Honor, the sexy club owner, who asks Vivian to find the murderer and offers free drinks? Or Leo, the handsome stranger who mysteriously appears after the murder to rescue Viv from dangerous situations? Narrator Sara Young doesn’t have many titles in her repertoire, but her confident and skilled approach make her a narrator to watch. She uses a Midwestern American accent for most of the characters, and Nightingale owner Honor has a delightfully sultry tone.