Black Orchid Blues

by Persia Walker

Overview

"The best kind of historical mystery: great history, great mystery, all wrapped up in a voice so authentic you feel it has come out of the past to whisper in your ear." --Lee Child, New York Times bestselling author

"Remarkable ... Imagine the richly provocative atmosphere of Walter Mosley or James Ellroy's best period work, and a savvy, truly likable heroine, and you have Black Orchid Blues." --Jason Starr

Society columnist Lanie Price finds herself in the wrong place at the wrong time when she witnesses the brutal nightclub kidnapping of the "Black Orchid," a sultry blues singer with a murky past. Hours later, a gruesome package lands on Lanie's doorstep, plunging her into a labyrinth of deception and treachery. She unearths a minefield of buried family secrets, haunting trauma, and a raging thirst for revenge that knows no bounds.

Evil hides behind the genteel façades of affluent Strivers' Row and stalks the ballroom of one of Harlem's most famous gay parties. In a complex plot that keeps you tied to the page, Black Orchid Blues explores the depths of human depravity and the desperation of its victims. Get your copy today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9798223776253
Publisher:	Persia Walker
Publication date:	02/25/2022
Series:	A Lanie Price Mystery
Pages:	324
Product dimensions:	5.00(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.73(d)

About the Author

Persia Walker is the author of the 1920s Jazz Age novels Harlem Redux, which the Boston Globe called "a full, vibrant portrait of that storied era when Harlem's pulse was the rhythm of black America"; and Darkness and the Devil Behind Me. Her short story "Such A Lucky, Pretty Girl" appears in the anthology The Blue Religion. A native New Yorker fluent in German, she is a former news writer for the Associated Press.

Editorial Reviews

In Walker's exuberant third Harlem Renaissance mystery (after 2008's Darkness and the Devil Behind Me), new performing sensation Queenie Lovetree, a six-foot-three drag queen who bills himself as the "Black Orchid," approaches Lanie Price, the Harlem Chronicle's society columnist, at the Cinnamon Club. Queenie wants Lanie to profile him, but a man in a Stetson and trench coat, armed with a tommy gun, interrupts their conversation and forces Queenie to leave the club. Lanie's involvement in the search for Queenie brings her into conflict with her editor, Sam Delaney, and Det. John Blackie—and into contact with such diverse denizens of 1920s Harlem as notorious loan shark Stax Murphy and transvestite Jack-a-Lee Talbot. This dark, sexy novel takes readers from the homes of Striver's Row professionals to the Faggots' Ball, Harlem's "largest drag ball of the year," as Lanie struggles to make sense of the kidnapper's increasingly bizarre behavior. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly

Harlem in the 1920s: The Cotton Club; louche parties where Barbara Stanwyck, Tallulah Bankhead, and Langston Hughes rub shoulders; African American professionals know they've arrived when they move up to Strivers' Row; and everything is scored to a hot jazz beat. Lanie Price has her beat, too. Introduced in Walker's Darkness and the Devil Behind Me, she is the persistent, not to say foolhardy, society columnist for the Harlem Chronicle. When a new blues singer, Queenie Lovetree, billed as Black Orchid, bursts onto the Harlem firmament, Lanie is there to do the interview. It's not her fault that Queenie is kidnapped right in the middle of it and that a mysterious package clearly meant for someone else is delivered to Lanie's door. Lanie keeps insisting it's not her fault up until she finds herself alone in a house with a stone-cold killer, wearing his dead wife's dress and discussing beauty tips with him. VERDICT Surrender your critical faculties at the door, put a Bessie Smith platter on the Victrola, and go with the flow on this mystery/romance/history mix. You just might like it.—Bob Lunn, Kansas City, MO

Library Journal