{"id":3107,"date":"2019-04-01T09:43:22","date_gmt":"2019-04-01T16:43:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=3107"},"modified":"2019-04-01T09:43:22","modified_gmt":"2019-04-01T16:43:22","slug":"susanna-calkins-murder-knocks-twice","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/susanna-calkins-murder-knocks-twice\/","title":{"rendered":"Susanna Calkins: Murder Knocks Twice"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Susanna Calkins had a wonderful series set in 17th<\/sup> century England, featuring maid turned bookseller Lucy Campion.\u00a0 Those were slightly more serious in tone than this delightful new series launch from this talented writer.\u00a0 Murder Knocks Twice<\/em> is set in prohibition era Chicago, with all the attendant issues of the mob, the past war, and the depression coming into play.\u00a0 Series heroine Gina Ricci is out of work and finds a job at a speakeasy through a friend.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s a little unsure about working there \u2013 she\u2019s worried about what her father will think, for one thing \u2013 and for another, she\u2019s replacing a girl who was killed and that makes her slightly wary. Calkins has a brisk story telling style, and she quickly establishes her setting and a wide array of characters.\u00a0 She\u2019s very good at delineating characters and making them memorable; I was never unsure or trying to remember who she was talking about, and to me, that\u2019s the mark of a very good writer.<\/p>\n

Calkins sets up Gina\u2019s backstory really well. Her father, who works repairing radios, lamps and clocks (what a faraway time, when those things were repaired instead of thrown away), but now has Parkinson\u2019s and can\u2019t really do much work.\u00a0 Gina fills in for him and loves to tinker.\u00a0 Her mother and brother are both dead, and her mother\u2019s family has never been a part of her life (her father is Italian, and her mother was Irish, which at the time, was a difficult chasm to bridge) so when she discovers the photographer at the club is a cousin who loved her mother she\u2019s delighted.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately the cousin is murdered right in front of her and her efforts to follow his dying wish \u00a0causes all kinds of confusion and violence.\u00a0 He was a photographer, and she was asked to hide his camera.\u00a0 Since she loves to tinker and figure things out so she teaches herself photography and learns how to develop film, which helps lead to the solution to the crime(s) in the novel.<\/p>\n

In this first outing, Gina is not sure who she should trust, and she\u2019s learning a new job as well, so there\u2019s lots of setting and character to establish.\u00a0 One of the more interesting things in the novel was the speakeasy where Gina works as a cigarette girl, and the inner machinations necessary to run that kind of business during prohibition.\u00a0 In film this is well traveled territory and so as readers we may come armed with knowledge, but Calkins still manages to surprise you as you read.\u00a0 This is a wonderful first in a series outing \u2013 I\u2019m already hoping for more.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Susanna Calkins had a wonderful series set in 17th century England, featuring maid turned bookseller Lucy Campion.\u00a0 Those were slightly more serious in tone than this delightful new series launch from this talented writer.\u00a0 Murder Knocks Twice is set in prohibition era Chicago, with all the attendant issues of the mob, the past war, and … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[103,10,105,100,102,104],"class_list":["post-3107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-1920s-chicago","tag-historical","tag-kiss-ass-heroine","tag-minotaur-books","tag-speakeasies","tag-susanna-calkins"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3107"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3107\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3108,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3107\/revisions\/3108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}