The Last Drop of Hemlock

July 17, 2023
Schellman’s entertaining follow-up to 2022’s Last Call at the Nightingale folds fastidious period detail into a sturdy mystery plot. Vivian Kelly has found gainful employment as a waitress at the Nightingale, an illegal jazz club in Prohibition-era New York City. When Pearlie, a bouncer at the Nightingale and the uncle of its chanteuse, Bea, dies suddenly from arsenic poisoning, the attending doctor rules it a suicide. Bea doesn’t buy it, especially because Pearlie recently told her he’d been working with a mob boss and was about to land a significant payday that would allow him to move their entire family to a better neighborhood. After Vivian pulls some strings to have the death reexamined by authorities, evidence of foul play surfaces—including the disappearance of Pearlie’s cache of money—and she plunges full-throttle into an investigation, aided by the nephew of the NYPD’s police commissioner. Schellman has fun with her chosen setting, sprinkling in welcome bits of period language without succumbing to cliché, and she further establishes Vivian as an ace investigator. Future Nightingale adventures would be welcome. Agent: Whitney Ross, Irene Goodman Literary.