{"id":4603,"date":"2022-10-04T13:59:06","date_gmt":"2022-10-04T20:59:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=4603"},"modified":"2022-10-04T13:59:06","modified_gmt":"2022-10-04T20:59:06","slug":"s-k-golden-the-socialites-guide-to-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/s-k-golden-the-socialites-guide-to-murder\/","title":{"rendered":"S.K. Golden: The Socialites Guide to Murder"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>This charming, frothy concoction is as charming and frothy as it\u2019s heroine, Evelyn Elizabeth Grace Murphy, daughter of the owner of New York City\u2019s Pinnacle Hotel.\u00a0 She lives in the penthouse, and she never leaves the building \u2013 there\u2019s no need!\u00a0 She has a social life, friends, food delivery, even a dog walker.\u00a0 It\u2019s 1958 and she loves to dress like her favorite movie star, Marilyn Monroe.\u00a0 Her fluffy white dog \u2013 she carries him around in her purse \u2013 is named Presley.\u00a0 As the story opens there\u2019s a big art exhibition opening, and Evelyn is on the arm of movie star(let) Henry Fox.\u00a0 She\u2019s dressed to the nines, in a replica of Marilyn\u2019s pink dress in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\n

Things go all to heck when the big reveal of the artist\u2019s masterpiece proves to be an empty frame, the painting somehow having been stolen during the fancy soiree. Things really fall apart when the painter is found murdered in the hotel a day or two later.\u00a0 Evelyn, who wears a St. Anthony medal around her neck and is indeed skilled at finding lost things, wants to figure out where the lost painting has gone and who has killed the painter.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s helped in her search by her friend Mac, who is skilled at picking locks and who walks her dog for her twice a day.\u00a0 He\u2019s a bellman at the hotel but he\u2019s much more than that to Evelyn.\u00a0 Henry, who uses her as a front, is not really her boyfriend, and it\u2019s obvious it\u2019s Mac who\u2019s going for the title.\u00a0 The two have a nice back and forth banter, with Mac providing some real-world practicality to balance out Evelyn\u2019s sheltered rich girl perspective.<\/p>\n

This historical cozy shades in Evelyn\u2019s character in deepening colors as the book proceeds.\u00a0 She\u2019s tasked with finding a lost little girl (a task that brings up memories of her hotel childhood) and it becomes apparent, as she is the one to find the body, that there\u2019s another, more traumatic and more personal body in her past.\u00a0 It\u2019s led to her not wanting to ever leave her safe place, i.e., the hotel.\u00a0 When she thinks about it, she realizes she hasn\u2019t left the Pinnacle in over a year.<\/p>\n

Golden provides the reader with a tight but varied circle of suspects, including hotel employees, the artist\u2019s assistant, a count and countess, and, it turns out, Henry himself.\u00a0 Evelyn is sure of Henry\u2019s innocence though Mac is not.\u00a0 Mac himself is fired and only allowed back on hotel property when in the company of Evelyn.\u00a0 Within this tight circle of suspects, the author also provides the reader with a very nicely done traditional mystery novel, complete with a summing up by the detective (that would be Evelyn) at the end.<\/p>\n

The historical details are light except for the details of Evelyn\u2019s clothes, so this book comes down on the cozy side of things.\u00a0 It\u2019s a smart, well-done cozy with a really interesting main character that I guarantee you will want to get to know better.\u00a0 I loved Evelyn, I loved her dog, and I enjoyed her relationship with both Mac and Henry.\u00a0 This is a wonderful series launch, filled with a delightful amount of sparkle.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This charming, frothy concoction is as charming and frothy as it\u2019s heroine, Evelyn Elizabeth Grace Murphy, daughter of the owner of New York City\u2019s Pinnacle Hotel.\u00a0 She lives in the penthouse, and she never leaves the building \u2013 there\u2019s no need!\u00a0 She has a social life, friends, food delivery, even a dog walker.\u00a0 It\u2019s 1958 … 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":[945,943,946,944,941,942],"class_list":["post-4603","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-1958-new-york-city","tag-crooked-lane-books","tag-first-in-a-series","tag-hotel-life","tag-s-k-golden","tag-the-socialites-guide-to-murder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4603","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=4603"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4603\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4608,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4603\/revisions\/4608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4603"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4603"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4603"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}