Amazon.com
After three taut, well-crafted contemporary mysteries, Craig Holden turns here to the 1920s, evoking a period rich in glamour and drama in a powerful and elegiac story told with consummate skill. Young Charlie Taft, a prosecutor who's the son of a former president and chief justice, doesn't need to solve the murder of Imogene Remus, the quixotic and exotic wife of Cincinnati bootlegger George Remus. George has already confessed to the crime, and his conviction is all but assured. But as Charlie delves deeper into the tangled history of the stunning socialite who defied her wealthy family to marry Remus and went to extraordinary lengths to free him from prison, he begins to doubt whether the bootlegger is insane, as he claims, or the real victim of his wife's betrayal. Holden brings a fascinating era in American history to life through the creation of complex, multidimensional characters who haunt the reader long after the last page is turned. This is a tour de force from a writer who gets better with every novel.
--Jane Adams
From Publishers Weekly
Based on a true story, this deftly written novel by Holden (Four Corners of the Night) delves deep into the murk of the Jazz Age, blending mystery and history in a heady cocktail. Charlie Taft is a prosecutor in late 1920s Cincinnati; he is also the son of William Howard Taft, Supreme Court chief justice and former president. When bootlegger George Remus turns himself in, in October 1927, for shooting his society wife, Imogene, Charlie thinks he's been handed a career maker. But all is not as simple as it seems. Through testimony and Imogene's diaries, Charlie becomes fascinated with the dead woman. Dubbed the Jazz Bird by Remus's men, she is a fabulous creation brilliant, beautiful, extraordinarily intelligent, nave and deeply loved by her husband. Remus is a fascinating character, too, his fortune made by purchasing alcohol allowance certificates from pharmaceutical corporations. Forced into prison in 1924, Remus is saved by Imogene, who goes to humiliating lengths to get him released, but the nature of her act leads him to believe he was betrayed. Is this why he killed her, or is he truly insane, as he pleads in court? Throughout the effective trial sequences, the reader learns the story slowly, as Charlie does, and there are twists to the very end. The poignancy of the story lies in Holden's uncanny ability to make his creations believable, flaws and all, and in his evocation of the charged and sultry 1920s. Agent, Gail Hochman. 8-city author tour.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
See all Editorial Reviews