Biographical note:
Co-founder of the popular reading blog SheReads, ARIEL LAWHON lives in Nashville with her husband and four boys.
Country of final manufacture:
US
Excerpt from book:
9780385537629|excerpt
Lawhon / THE WIFE, THE MAID, AND THE MISTRESS
Club Abbey, Greenwich Village, August 6, 1969
WE BEGIN IN A BAR. We will end here as well but that is more than you need to know at the moment. For now, a woman sits in a corner booth waiting to give her confession. But her party is late, and without an audience she looks small and alone, like an invalid in an over-sized church pew. It’s not so easy for her, this truth telling, and she strains against it. A single strand of pearls—brittle and yellowed with age—rests against the flat plane of her chest. She rolls them between her fingers as though counting the beads on a rosary. Stella Crater has avoided this confession for thirty-nine years. The same number of years she has been coming to this bar.
Not long ago this meeting would have been a spectacle, splashed across the headlines of every paper in New York: Wife of Missing Judge Meets with Lead Investigator, Tells All! But the days of front-page spreads, interviews, and accusations are over, filed away in some distant archive. Tonight her stage is empty.
Stella looks at her watch. Nine-fifteen.
Club Abbey was once a speakeasy during the Jazz age, and is now another relic in Greenwich Village, peddling its former glory through the tourist guides. It sits one floor below street level, dark and subdued. Scuffed pine floors. Black and white photos line the walls. An aging jukebox has long since replaced the jazz quartet. The only remnant is Stan, the bartender. He was fifteen when hired by notorious gangster Owney Madden to sweep the floors at closing. Owney took a liking to the kid, as did the showgirls, and Stan’s been behind the bar ever since. He’s never missed Stella’s ritual. His part is small, but he plays it well.
Two lowball glasses. Twelve cubes of ice split between them. Crown Royal on the rocks. Stan arranges napkins on her table and sets the glasses down. Her eyes are slick with a watery film—the harbinger of age and death.
“Good to see you again, Mrs. Crater.”
Stella swats him away with an emaciated hand and he hangs back to watch, drying glasses with a dishtowel. It’s the same thing every year: she sits alone in her booth for a few minutes and then he brings the drinks. Straight whiskey, the way her husband liked it. She’ll raise one glass, saluting the empty place across from her, and say, “Good luck, Joe, wherever you are.” Stella will take her time with the drink, letting it burn, drawing out the moment until there’s nothing left in her glass. That is when she’ll rise and walk out, leaving the other drink untouched.
Except tonight she does none of these things.
Fifteen minutes she sits there, rubbing the rim of her glass. Stan has no script for what to do next and he stares at her, confused. He doesn’t see the door swing open or the older gentleman enter. Doesn’t see the trench coat or the faded gray fedora. Sees none of it until Detective Jude Simon slides into the booth across from Stella.
She lays her palm on the table, inches from a pack of cigarettes, and sits up straighter. The booth is hard against her back, walnut planks pressing against the knobs of her spine. “You’re late.”<"As rumors swirl about political corruption, an NYC judge disappears in 1930 without a trace. Caught in the scandal are his wife and showgirl mistress – plus his dutiful maid, whose detective husband is investigating the case. Inspired by a real-life unsolved mystery, this mesmerizing novel features characters that make a lasting impression."
--People Magazine
“A gripping, fast-paced noir novel.... captures a New York City period full of high-kicking showgirls, mob-linked speakeasies and Tammany Hall political scandal.... Lawhon brings fresh intrigue to this tale, making the final outcome a guessing game for the reader as events unfold... Her version is built colorfully around many of the actual places and people who were key figures in the case... Stella, Maria and Ritzi are central to Lawhon's tale and give it a depth of emotion that is often missing from crime thrillers... the story moves forward with momentum, thanks to well-crafted scenes and fluid dialogue. Also, despite the many decades since Judge Crater went missing, the mystery of his disappearance is still a powerful magnet for its fictional retelling.”
- Associated Press
“Set among seedy speakeasies and backstage dressing rooms during Prohibition, the twists and turns in the tale of lust, greed, and deceit keep you guessing until the final pages....The Nancy Drew in you can’t wait to solve the artfully hidden clues in this historical mystery.”
--Daily Candy
"Lawhon begins her story in 1969, when Stella meets with Jude to reveal the truth. In extended flashbacks, [Lawhon] paints a sordid portrait of mobsters and mayhem, corruption and carnage, greed and graft as she slyly builds the suspense to a stunning revelation. A story of a bygone New York, "The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress" is also a tale of three women, strong in different ways, who lived at a time when gender roles often led to stereotyping and disrespect. The world might never know the full facts about Crater's fate, but readers with a taste for noir will enjoy this intelligent take on notoriety."
-The Richmond Times Dispatch
“This story is at once an intricate tale of disparate but coexisting definitions of love and loyalty as well as a tale of what it meant to be a person of power in New York City in the early 20th century. Historical fiction and true crime readers will thoroughly enjoy this book.”
- Library Journal
“In this tale of Jazz Age New York, Lawhon walks one of fiction’s trickiest tightropes, creating a novel that is both genuinely moving and full of pulpy fun.…The imagined events of the novel become even more poignant when the reader discovers that the story is based on the real-life disappearance of Joseph Crater and that most of the characters were real people, like the notorious madam Vivian Gordon and the vile gangster Owney Madden. It’s a great story, told with verve and feeling.”
--Booklist
“Ariel Lawhon has concocted a stylish homage to noir in The Wife, The Maid, and The Mistress. This fun, fast-paced novel has it all: speakeasies, gangsters, show girls, and not one, not two, but three women scorned. A real page turner.”
--Melanie Benjamin, New York Times bestselling author of THE AVIATOR’S WIFE.
“A gangster’s showgirl, a wounded wife, a rich man’s maid, and the true-life, never-solved disappearance of a New York City judge, all come brilliantly to life amidst the Boardwalk Empire-like strut of Prohibition, in Lawhon’s sparklingly imagined novel. Vivid and unsettling, with a finale as startling as the pop of a gun.”
--Caroline Leavitt
