A death of no importance

First Title Value for Searching:

Personal Author:

Fredericks, Mariah

Edition:

First edition.

Physical Description:

viii, 276 pages ; 24 cm.

Genre:

Mystery fiction.

Subject Term:

Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction.

Upper class -- Fiction.

Publication Info:

New York : Minotaur Books, 2018.

Subject:

Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction.

Upper class -- Fiction.

Mystery fiction.

Fashionable society

High society

Society, High

Upper classes

SAILS ISBN:

9781250152978

Available:

Library	Shelf Number	Shelf Location	Status
Searching... Dartmouth - Southworth	MYS FRE	MYSTERY	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Foxboro - Boyden Library	MYS FREDERICKS, M.	MYSTERY	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Hanson Public Library	FREDERICKS	MYSTERY	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Mansfield Public Library	FIC FREDERICKS	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Mattapoisett Free Public Library	FRE	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Middleborough Public Library	MYS FRE	MYSTERY	Searching... Unknown
Searching... New Bedford Free Public Library	MYS FREDERICKS	MYSTERY	Searching... Unknown
Searching... New Bedford Wilks Branch	MYS FREDERICKS	MYSTERY	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Pembroke Public Library	FIC FREDERICKS, M.	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Raynham Library	FIC FREDERICKS, M	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Rehoboth - Blanding Free PL	FIC FREDERICKS, M.	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Richards Memorial Library	FREDERICKS -- (M)	MYSTERY	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Rochester - Plumb Library	FIC FRE	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Seekonk Public Library	FIC FREDERICKS	FICTION	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Taunton Public Library	FREDERICKS, MARIAH	1ST FLOOR STACKS	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Westport Free Public Library	MYS FREDERICKS	MYSTERY	Searching... Unknown

"A taut, suspenseful, and complex murder mystery with gorgeous period detail."--Susan Elia MacNeal

Through her exquisite prose, sharp observation and deft plotting, Mariah Fredericks invites us into the heart of a changing New York in her remarkable debut adult novel, A Death of No Importance .

New York City, 1910. Invisible until she's needed, Jane Prescott has perfected the art of serving as a ladies' maid to the city's upper echelons. When she takes up a position with the Benchley family, dismissed by the city's elite as "new money", Jane realizes that while she may not have financial privilege, she has a power they do not--she understands the rules of high society. The Benchleys cause further outrage when their daughter Charlotte becomes engaged to notorious playboy Norrie, the son of the eminent Newsome family.

But when Norrie is found murdered at a party, Jane discovers she is uniquely positioned--she's a woman no one sees, but who witnesses everything; who possesses no social power, but that of fierce intellect--and therefore has the tools to solve his murder. There are many with grudges to bear: from the family Norrie was supposed to marry into, to the survivors of a tragic accident in a mine owned by the Newsomes, to the rising anarchists who are sick of those born into wealth getting away with anything they want. Jane also knows that in both high society and the city's underbelly, morals can become cheap in the wrong hands: scandal and violence simmer just beneath the surface--and can break out at any time.

Reviews (4)

Publisher's Weekly Review

YA author Fredericks (Season of the Witch) makes her adult debut with a sparkling mystery set in 1910 Manhattan. Lady's maid Jane Prescott works for the Benchleys, who have the money but not the sophistication to be part of elite society. When the Benchleys' daughter Charlotte falls for Robert "Norrie" Newsome, the playboy heir to a mining fortune, drama ensues. At the Christmas Eve ball Norrie's parents reluctantly hold to announce his engagement to Charlotte, he's found dead, his eyes gouged out. Charlotte, the young woman Norrie jilted when he took up with her, and their families all have motives, as do local anarchists with a history of violent protest and the families of those killed in a recent Newsome mine disaster. Concerned for her employers, Jane looks into the murder with help from an attractive reporter and a chemist knowledgeable about emerging forensic techniques. The novel's voice, plotting, pace, characterization, and historical background are all expertly crafted, while the resolution-which feels both surprising and convincing-will leave readers hungry for more. Agent: Victoria Skurnick, Levine Greenberg Rostan Literary. (Apr.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

The title of YA novelist Fredericks' first book for adults suggests the theme of its intricate historical mystery and pointed commentary on human nature. In 1910, for New York's wealthiest citizens the New York 400 who hold the city's purse strings, the sad truth is that only some lives are important. At the same time, disagreeing anarchists plot violent revolution to force changes in working conditions, crime, and poverty. Deftly woven around these issues is the murder of a playboy, Norrie Newsome, whose family is one of the 400 and whose murderer may be one of the two women he had promised to marry. The story is told through the first-person narration of lady's maid Jane Prescott, perfectly positioned to observe the very rich. The murder plot unspools against the vividly evoked background of a horrific mine disaster, the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, and the growing campaign for women's rights. Readers can enjoy a similarly down-to-earth and quick-witted heroine in Rosemary Simpson's puzzler What the Dead Leave Behind (2017) and the same wealthy cesspools of greed in Victoria Thompson's Murder in the Bowery (2017).--Baker, Jen Copyright 2018 Booklist

New York Review of Books Review

Taryn's target, a rival senator named Porter Smalls, hires Lucas to keep him alive, but as an extreme right-winger, his enemies are legion. The designated hit man, Jack Parrish, has his own adversaries, including a colleague he shafted when they both worked for the C.I.A. and an Army colonel who watched him steal military equipment and sell it to outside contractors. Sadly, for readers hoping someone will succeed in bumping off obnoxious Senator Smalls, it's his lover who dies in a suspicious auto accident. The political angle adds more bile to Taryn's plan to crush Lucas, who's determined to unmask her as the villain she is. But the senator herself acknowledges Lucas's adversarial strength. "He is intelligent and he is dangerous," she admits. "When I say dangerous, I mean a killer." She's right about that. Sandford has been working on Lucas for more than two dozen books, and by now Lucas can handle just about anything, including a group of bad-apple mercenaries. He's a hero for these perilous times, a man's man who can take on three big brutes at once and isn't afraid to wear pink. "I HAVE SKILLS that are dormant, rusty, but not forgotten," acknowledges the hired assassin who goes by the name Columbus in Derek Haas's thrillers. THE WAY I DIE (Pegasus Crime, $25.95) finds this enigmatic protagonist in northern Michigan, on Mackinac Island, preparing to eradicate a predatory schoolteacher before the man can pounce on the teenage girls in his care. But in a disturbingly funny plot turn, another pupil takes the initiative and heads off this human raptor. "She has the disposition of some of the greatest killers I know - razor-sharp wit buried inside a forgettable package," Columbus (who's calling himself Copeland these days) observes of short, chubby, nearsighted Meghan, whom he might consider training in his own profession. That memorable scene introduces a plot that takes this self-exiled assassin to the Pacific Northwest to protect a software inventor named Matthew Boone from being eliminated by persons or governments unknown. The face-recognition program Boone designed sounds fascinating, but there's no time to linger on the particulars when Columbus is stocking up on the latest weaponry and getting ready to face a killer as cool as he is. MURDER IN THE RANKS of high society provides heady entertainment for the servants who toil in obscurity in A DEATH OF NO IMPORTANCE (Minotaur, $24.99), a lively upstairs/downstairs mystery by Mariah Fredericks set in New York City in 1910. Jane Prescott, a smart and sensible lady's maid in service to the nouveau riche Benchley family, has a front-row seat for the mischief that ensues when pretty, vapid Charlotte Benchley rises above her station and becomes romantically entwined with a rich nitwit ne'er-dowell, Robert Norris Newsome Jr. When Norrie is murdered on the night their engagement is to be announced, Charlotte becomes a suspect and only Jane seems inclined to clear the silly girl's good name. The murder mystery becomes entangled, at times awkwardly, with larger social issues like unionism, anarchism and the women's suffrage movement. But the scenes that work best feature oblivious upper-crust swells, dancing while the victims of a terrible mine disaster lie moldering in their graves. Not even the most disciplined author can write a novel set in France without salivating over the local cuisine. In Sorcha McDonagh's translation of the pseudonymous Jean-Luc Bannalec's enchanting THE FLEUR DE SEL MURDERS (Minotaur, $24.99), Commissaire Georges Dupin ponders the disappearance of a crusading investigative reporter named Lilou Breval while contemplating a meal of pan-fried Breton sole, a specialty, "along with langoustines, prawns, scallops, delicious sea bass, and squid," of the port of Le Croisic. In the nearby salt-producing region, an elaborate system of canals and pools yields a crop that's been called White Gold. But fierce global competition has taken its toll, and Dupin suspects the pools are currently being used for something more sinister than processing salt. Ancient legends impart a pleasing frisson to his sleuthing ("I had warned you about walking through the salt marshes at night or early in the morning"), and he learns that this mineral isn't as ordinary as it seems. MARILYN STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.

Library Journal Review

Years after Jane Prescott joined the wealthy but parvenu Benchley family as maid to the two daughters, she recalls the 1910 crime that made all the New York papers. Younger daughter Charlotte had flung herself at notorious playboy Norrie Newsome, heir to the Newsome fortune. On Christmas Eve, before the announcement of their engagement, Jane finds Norrie's body in the library. As the scandal sheets waver between suspecting anarchists or Charlotte, the observant Jane teams up with a reporter to uncover other suspects. Fredericks's (The Girl in the Park) first adult mystery is a richly detailed historical that addresses the social issues and class inequities of the early 20th century. Jane is an appealing amateur sleuth, an orphan exposed to the excesses of the wealthy while remaining friends with union organizers and anarchists. VERDICT With its vivid depiction of contrasting worlds this series debut should appeal to readers of Alyssa Maxwell's "Gilded Age" historical mysteries.-Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN © Copyright 2018. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.