Pinnacle Hotel #2
This charming series follows Evelyn Elizabeth Grace Murphy in 1958 New York City. Her father owns the swanky Pinnacle Hotel, where Evelyn lives, and he makes only occasional appearances in her life. As the book opens, she and her boyfriend, Mac, are at a party she’s planned at the hotel. It’s full of wealthy, prominent people, but as it’s wrapping up, Mac suggests they make a break for it and head to his place in Yonkers. Evelyn, who is agoraphobic (but she’s working on it) reluctantly agrees to this plan. Unfortunately, on their way out of the hotel garage, they find one of the guests, a Judge Baker, dead in his car of an apparent heroin overdose.
A screaming prostitute is discovered in the trunk of the Judge’s car, and all hell breaks loose. Evelyn, who takes crime in her hotel very personally, already wants to solve the case and Mac agrees to help out. When Evelyn’s father arrives unexpectedly, she and Mac have an uneasy meeting with him as he objects to their relationship. The next morning, Evelyn finds her father having a seizure in his bedroom – the victim of another heroin overdose. What’s worse, Evelyn’s maid, Florence, is found dead in the closet.
With the help of Mac and her therapist, Evelyn is managing to hold it together, but the urgency of solving the crime after her father’s attack seems far more important. While her father is recovering in the hospital, she sends Mac out to hunt for clues, but he’s unfortunately arrested and Evelyn’s ally in the police department, Hodgson, is fired.
This plot set up makes the whole novel sound quite grim, but it’s really far from it. Evelyn is a young woman – only 21 – and while she does have agoraphobia, she manages, in this book, to take a taxi, get to the hospital, and be taken to the police station for questioning – all without fainting or falling apart. While Evelyn is a somewhat frothy confection, interested in fashion, idolizing Marilyn Monroe, and throwing her father’s money around, she’s also a genuinely kind person who cares for her friends and employees, loves Mac, and worships her little dog, Presley (named for you know who).
The detective work is snappy and intelligent, with all kinds of false leads and hard work on the part of Evelyn and the fired detective Hodgson, who is now on Evelyn’s payroll. There’s some sly humor as well, but the real masterpiece of the books is Evelyn herself. At 21, she’s realizing she’s not the center of the universe, and she’s trying to take a deeper interest in those around her (other than just asking them to do things for her). She’s ashamed of how little she knew Florence, who worked for her for years.
She also has some genuine trauma that she’s still not quite dealt with. Her mother was murdered and the crime has never been solved. Evelyn was six at the time, and her father flew in, hired a nanny, and left. Evelyn then also suffered the loss of her nanny. These things inform her personality and in my opinion, she’s a little too hard on herself. The clever Golden leaves the reader with a surprise turn of events at the end of the book, as well as a good cliffhanger for the next installment. This a charmingly odd series with a truly interesting heroine. — Robin Agnew
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