Edna Ferber Mystery

In 1904, the future bestselling writer Edna Ferber, then a nineteen-year-old fledgling reporter in Wisconsin, teams up with famed escape artist Harry Houdini to solve the baffling murder of a girl who has mysteriously disappeared from a locked room at the local high school. Edna Ferber is a reporter for the Appleton, Wisconsin, Crescent, an occupation that many townspeople, including her own family, consider scandalous for a proper young girl. It's a troubling summer for her. Her home life is in disorder, though she is dedicated to her blind father. Her mother and sister dislike her walking the streets as a reporter. Even the newsroom has become a hostile environment, with a new city editor determined to undermine her. Then she gets to interview the famous escape artist Harry Houdini, who is in town visiting old friends. Houdini, as Ehrich Weiss, spent his boyhood years in the small town. When Frana Lempke, a beautiful young German high school girl, disappears and is soon discovered murdered, the unusual crime baffles the local police because Frana mysteriously disappeared from a locked room at the high school. Edna asks Houdini for help in solving the murder. Houdini takes a liking to Edna and agrees to help. But as Edna pursues the story, alienating any number of people, she senses that she is being followed. Piecing together the clues, she comes to see that her own life in the small town is unraveling. As the future bestselling writer starts to solve the crime, she understands that her involvement will impact her life forever. A Poisoned Pen Press Mystery

"Others find peace of mind in pretending. Couldn't you? Couldn't I?"-from the song "Make Believe," by Jerome Kern and Oscar Hammerstein II for the musical Show Boat In June 1951, Edna Ferber heads to Hollywood to support an old friend, Max, who has found himself blacklisted in the McCarthy anti-Communist hearings, which have rattled Hollywood with allegations of Communist sympathies. She has no plans of becoming involved with the soon-to-be-released MGM film based on her bestselling novel Show Boat. She first met Max Jeffries when he worked on the 1927 Broadway production of Show Boat, and most recently he had brought his magic to the new film version starring Ava Gardner. In fact, he was the one who pushed to have Gardner play the role of Julie, the doomed mulatto. But Max, expelled from the MGM lot and shunned by friends, is not credited on the film because of his political leanings. Edna's visit is one of friendship, nothing more-until Max ends up dead. Edna now must search for answers to the questions surrounding his death. She begins socializing with Ava Gardner, a woman currently scandalizing Hollywood and annoying Hedda Hopper because of her affair with Frank Sinatra, who has left his wife for the sultry goddess. Edna finds Ava, the supposedly hard-as-nails temptress, to be a vulnerable, insecure woman whom she comes to like. Because the gentle Max was killed right after a public brawl with Sinatra, Ava fears that her lover will be implicated. Edna plays sleuth quietly, becoming involved with the people who hang around the edges of Hollywood fame and fortune, where she uncovers dark layers of greed, envy, and desire. Against the backdrop of the new Show Boat is the tawdry romance of dream-street Hollywood itself-all part of the world of make-believe.

A sweltering July in Chicago, 1923. Edna Ferber, now a famous short-story writer, is supposed to be researching the novel that will become So Big, her Pulitzer-Prize winner. With her mother, Julia, she spends the week visiting her mother's old childhood friend, Esther Newmann, who lives with her family on the edge of the bustling Maxwell Street Jewish marketplace. But the awful specter of a scandalous murder fifteen years before suddenly haunts Edna. Leah Brenner, the woman confined to a mental hospital after stabbing her husband Ivan to death, is back home, sitting next door on her front porch. Horrified, Julia Ferber laments the return of a brazen murderer to the quiet street. But Edna, meeting the old woman, believes she was condemned for a murder she did not commit. "Leave it alone," the Newmann grandmother Molly insists―"it's old news. "Although life has moved on, even Leah's children believe their mother stabbed their father. After all, she was found standing over her husband's body, blood on her fingertips. But no knife was ever located. As Edna probes into the Brenner family―grown children at war with one another, a flashy uncle who once wanted to marry Leah―Edna shakes up the street. Undaunted, she has an idea who the murderer is, but she needs an elaborate scheme to trap the killer. Another shocking death and a funeral give her the opportunity.