{"id":5273,"date":"2023-10-04T05:50:50","date_gmt":"2023-10-04T12:50:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=5273"},"modified":"2023-10-04T05:50:50","modified_gmt":"2023-10-04T12:50:50","slug":"s-k-golden-the-socialites-guide-to-death-dating","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/s-k-golden-the-socialites-guide-to-death-dating\/","title":{"rendered":"S.K.Golden: The Socialites Guide to Death & Dating"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pinnacle Hotel #2<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>This charming series follows Evelyn Elizabeth Grace Murphy in 1958 New York City.\u00a0 Her father owns the swanky Pinnacle Hotel, where Evelyn lives, and he makes only occasional appearances in her life.\u00a0 As the book opens, she and her boyfriend, Mac, are at a party she\u2019s planned at the hotel.\u00a0 It\u2019s full of wealthy, prominent people, but as it\u2019s wrapping up, Mac suggests they make a break for it and head to his place in Yonkers.\u00a0 Evelyn, who is agoraphobic (but she\u2019s working on it) reluctantly agrees to this plan.\u00a0 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.<\/p>\n

A screaming prostitute is discovered in the trunk of the Judge\u2019s car, and all hell breaks loose.\u00a0 Evelyn, who takes crime in her hotel very personally, already wants to solve the case and Mac agrees to help out.\u00a0 When Evelyn\u2019s father arrives unexpectedly, she and Mac have an uneasy meeting with him as he objects to their relationship.\u00a0 The next morning, Evelyn finds her father having a seizure in his bedroom \u2013 the victim of another heroin overdose.\u00a0 What\u2019s worse, Evelyn\u2019s maid, Florence, is found dead in the closet.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s attack seems far more important.\u00a0 While her father is recovering in the hospital, she sends Mac out to hunt for clues, but he\u2019s unfortunately arrested and Evelyn\u2019s ally in the police department, Hodgson, is fired.<\/p>\n

This plot set up makes the whole novel sound quite grim, but it\u2019s really far from it.\u00a0 Evelyn is a young woman \u2013 only 21 \u2013 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 \u2013 all without fainting or falling apart.\u00a0 While Evelyn is a somewhat frothy confection, interested in fashion, idolizing Marilyn Monroe, and throwing her father\u2019s money around, she\u2019s 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).<\/p>\n

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\u2019s payroll.\u00a0 There\u2019s some sly humor as well, but the real masterpiece of the books is Evelyn herself.\u00a0 At 21, she\u2019s realizing she\u2019s not the center of the universe, and she\u2019s trying to take a deeper interest in those around her (other than just asking them to do things for her).\u00a0 She\u2019s ashamed of how little she knew Florence, who worked for her for years.<\/p>\n

She also has some genuine trauma that she\u2019s still not quite dealt with.\u00a0 Her mother was murdered and the crime has never been solved.\u00a0 Evelyn was six at the time, and her father flew in, hired a nanny, and left.\u00a0 Evelyn then also suffered the loss of her nanny.\u00a0 These things inform her personality and in my opinion, she\u2019s a little too hard on herself.\u00a0 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.\u00a0 This a charmingly odd series with a truly interesting heroine. — Robin Agnew<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

.<\/p>\n

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

Pinnacle Hotel #2 This charming series follows Evelyn Elizabeth Grace Murphy in 1958 New York City.\u00a0 Her father owns the swanky Pinnacle Hotel, where Evelyn lives, and he makes only occasional appearances in her life.\u00a0 As the book opens, she and her boyfriend, Mac, are at a party she\u2019s planned at the hotel.\u00a0 It\u2019s full … 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":[945,328,943,10,1391,1276,941,1390],"class_list":["post-5273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-1958-new-york-city","tag-cozy","tag-crooked-lane-books","tag-historical","tag-pinnacle-hotel","tag-robin-agnew","tag-s-k-golden","tag-the-socialites-guide-to-death-dating"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5273","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=5273"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5273\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5306,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5273\/revisions\/5306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}