1920s

Of all times to travel to upstate New York, Megan Cary told herself as she hurried into Grand Central Station, it was at the height of a blizzard.
It is January 1928. Megan Cary, a young and stylish librarian, is on her way to the state library conference. On the train, Meg meets Janet Faraday who confides that she killed her son’s father six years earlier—and got away with it.
With her marriage crumbling, Meg can no longer tolerate her husband Adam’s moodiness and philandering. She harbored thoughts of divorce but murder?
During a family visit, Adam mysteriously dies. Meg finds a suicide note and the police want to quickly close the case. So does Adam’s mother Helen, the stern matriarch of the family. Skeptical that Adam would kill himself, Meg hires a private detective whose investigation ultimately unravels family secrets as a series of surprising deaths occur over two cold and snowy weeks in Albany.
Janet falls under a trolley and is killed. Yet a witness claims she saw someone push Janet to her death. Then comes the abrupt death of Helen’s maid. Soon after, a neighborhood busybody, who was present at the time of Adam’s death, falls down her cellar stairs and dies. Meg wonders if these deaths could somehow be related.
THE LATE MR. CARY is a classic mystery set in the stately home of an upper crust family in the 1920s, bringing the 1920s to life—amidst a parade of death!

Targeted Age Group:: Adults

What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
I enjoy history and especially the era of the 1920s. I set my mystery in the 1920s as it is a fascinating period in American history.

New York City, 1924

Determined to pursue her dream of becoming a crime reporter, heiress Trixie Frank believes she’s off to a running start when she lands a job at the most successful tabloid in Manhattan. Unfortunately, her high hopes fade fast when she’s assigned to the rewrite desk.

Sean Costigan is a demoted homicide detective on the commissioner’s blacklist. The last thing he needs complicating his life is a perky debutante with delusions of becoming the next great American journalist. Too bad she happens to hold one of the keys to solving his latest case, the Central Park murder of a notorious gangster. The other key? Sean’s childhood sweetheart, the victim’s widow, who has gone missing.

Sean soon has more trouble with dames than any good man deserves. But that’s the least of his worries. When he suspects deadly corruption within his own department, it’s not just his and Trixie’s careers that depend on finding the killer. It’s their lives.

Targeted Age Group:: Adult

What Inspired You to Write Your Book?
My love of mystery, romance and classic cinema. I’ve been a fan of old movies since I was a teenager, and one of my favorite romantic mystery films is The Thin Man. The dialogue is top-notch and the romantic chemistry between William Powell and Myrna Loy as Nick and Nora Charles is playful and fun.

Add to that, I love Manhattan as a setting, and I’ve always been fascinated by the 1920s—the bootleggers, the flappers, the speakeasies, the post-war abandon. It was a combination of all these elements that inspired me to try my hand at creating a sleuthing couple of my own.

THE LATE MR. CARY A 1920s Mystery by Michael Campeta

It Had to Be You by Delynn Royer