Passing Fancies

A Julia Kydd Novel, Book 2

By: Marlowe Benn

Narrated by: Sarah Zimmerman

Julia Kydd returns in a new mystery set in the beguiling world of the Harlem Renaissance, where reckless revelry leads to devastating crimes.

When stylish young bibliophile Julia Kydd returns to 1920s New York, she’s determined to launch her own private press. Julia’s aspirations take her into the heart of the Harlem Renaissance, a literary movement unlike any she’s known - where notions of race, sexuality, and power are slippery, and identities can be deceptively fluid.

At a risqué soiree, Julia befriends singer Eva Pruitt, whose new book is rumored to reveal lurid details about the Harlem nightlife. But Leonard Timson, a local nightclub owner, is furious when he suspects he’s the inspiration for a violent character in the book. By morning, Timson is dead, and both Eva and her manuscript are missing.

Julia finds herself immersed in a case as troubling as Jazz Age race relations. More questions than answers surface about Eva’s mysterious world, and powerful interests conspire to protect dangerous secrets. Still, no man can stand between Julia and the truth: appalled by violent injustice, she must use her wit and guile to find the killer.

©2020 Margaret L. Benton. (P)2020 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

If you like mysteries, you will like this book

I'm not into mysteries, but I enjoyed the story. Not very challenging but it's ok.

Murder mystery!

Slow building historical murder mystery! Dangerous secrets in a jazz age. Julia Kidd had another murder to solve........a witty and clever heroine. Loved narrator Sarah Zimmerman's voice👌

The story line

I throughly enjoyed the book but sometimes I got frustrated at how she would put herself in danger. It was a little long winded at times but overall excellent.

Very well-crafted and woke historical mystery

Took a chance on two Marlowe Benn mysteries Amazon offered for free in Unlimited and am astonished at how very strong they both are. Benn has done much more than the requisite homework to render the 1920s Harlem Cotton-Club scene from the 3rd-person-intimate POV of Julia Kydd: White, raised in enormous economic privilege, but ethical, compassionate, and open to the evidence of her abysmal ignorance that experience sends cascading into her consciousness. Crucially she does more than learn; she acts in the light of that discovery. The author, clearly a passionate and professionally informed bibliophile, brings so much more to bear on these mysteries than that expertise; Benn is a first-rate prose stylist, a skilled designer of solidly suspenseful as well as emotionally engaging and thoughtful narrative, and a writer of conscience, who weaves social commentary into genre fiction with determined grace. I recommend this novel with many exclamation points.

Excellent!

I looked forward to this next book and was not disappointed! The characters are “real” and interesting; the plot a marvelous twisty ride that kept me guessing. It took a little while for me to adjust to the narrator but in the end I think she was perfect. More, please!