Books: New Novels From Michael McGarrity & Amita Murray

 

Night in the City

By Michael McGarrity

W.W. Norton & Company; hardcover, 272 pages; $28.99; available today, Tuesday, May 20th

Michael McGarrity is the author of the nationally best-selling Kevin Kerney crime novels, which he concluded in Head Wounds, the acclaimed American West trilogy, and his recent novel, The Long Ago.

Night in the City is McGarrity's new novel, and it it set in a scene that should be familiar to many readers, New York City in the 1950s. Men in suits and hats, women in dresses and heels, newspaper boys hawking papers on street corners, Martini lunches and jazz clubs at night.

The city also has a dark underbelly, one of a gritty night filled with wiseguys, detectives who may or may not be good guys, and femme fatales who drive both sides crazy. Along with the same martinis and jazz as the shiny day, this world has crime, corruption, and secrets whispered in all-night diners and dive bars. 

Sam Monroe, a former Korean War veteran turned assistant district attorney, is at the center of it all, and he is now a current prime suspect in the murder of a wealthy socialite.

When Sam returned from war, he cashes in his GI Bill to go to law school while working as a store detective at an upscale department store to make some extra money. One of the people he catches shoplifting is the beautiful, mysterious, and extremely rich Laura Nielson, and they wine up starting a steamy love affair.

Even though Sam knows he is one of many men in Laura's little black book, he falls in love with her. The thing is Laura has always had an expiration date on the relationship. She breaks up with Sam, whose heart is broken, and then disappears from his life for two years before calling him and saying they need to talk. 

Laura doesn't indicate when they're supposed to meet, and by the time Sam arrives at her penthouse, she has been strangled and left naked, with only his dog tags from the military around her neck.

Sam sees the writing on the wall, and he takes off into the night with two goals in mind, to stay one step ahead of the cops and to find out who killed Laura. Sam becomes the prime suspect, as circumstantial evidence mounts against him, and the cops close in on him, including a rogue patrolman who has a grudge against Sam and is looking for serious payback.

As he is on his quest, Sam relies on the unofficial help of several coworkers in the DA's office, and he also meets Debora Jean Ryan, a private detective who has his own reasons for seeking answers about what happened to Laura that he keeps close to the vest.

As they work the case, Sam and DJ grow closer, while also discovering they didn't know all that much about Laura. Many questions about, including if she was involved with a well-known crime family, who she took a secret road trip out west, if her reckless love life led to her death, and what happened the summer before tenth grade when a local boy died in her hometown.

While Sam is trying to solve his ex-lover's murder and clear his name, he also finds himself helping to expose a police corruption ring that involves officers who he thought were friends.

McGarrity writes this this classic crime noir fiction in cinematic fashion. He captures in vivid detail Sam going through the metropolitan area, from the Lower East Side to Millionaies' Row and Spanish Harlem in Manhattan to Queens to Hoboken and the farm Laura grew up on in rural New Jersey. He lives in Yorkville, part of the Upper East Side, while falling in love with a DJ, and breaks into quite a fair number of buildings.

An Unladylike Secret: A Marleigh Sisters Novel

By Amita Murray

Avon; paperback, 432 pages; $19.99; available today, Tuesday, May 20th

Amita Murray is a writer whose Unladylike Regency series is published with HarperCollins UK and Avon USA. She also writes the Arya Writers series of mystery novels about a neurodivergent amateur sleuth. Amita is a winner of the Exeter Novel Prize and the SI Leeds Prize, and her work appears in Red, The Bookseller, New Scientist, and Writer's Digest. She has been writer-in-residence at the British Council, Spread the Word, Leverhulme, Literature Works, and more. Her writing and creativity chat can be found on her YouTube channel, @AmitaMurray.

An Unladylike Secret is the third and final installment of the Marleigh Sisters series. 

Mira Marleigh is an unassuming companion, at least as the public views her, and she quietly drifts through London society accompanying her dear friend and confidant, Ursula. This is just how Mira wants it, because unbeknownst to everyone aside from her sisters and Ursula, she is the anonymous author of one of the most popular society circulars under the pseudonym Aurelius.

Mira is a purveyor of society gossip, which allows her to keep a low profile that allows her to see and hear nearly everything. However, is this prosaic, passionless persona that she has carefully constructed who she really sought to be?

One of Mira's circulars, or publications, details a heated argument between the blue-blooded brothers Stephen and Finnegan Underwood ends up as the basis for the case against Finnegan when Stephen winds up dead. Stephen's widow, Lucretia, is in search of Aurelius' help in proving that Finnegan is innocent, so Mira, acting as Aurelius' "assistant," travels to the coastal town of Devonshire to help her.

While there, Mira has a chance seaside encounter with a smoldering mystery man that might change everything. Will he be key to unlocking the truth, or to Mira's heart? He also could be her downfall.