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Ed Ifkovic

January 3, 1935. The trial opens in Flemington, New Jersey, for the man accused of "the crime of the century." And Edna Ferber is there to cover it.

1932. On a windy March 1 night, Charles Lindbergh, America's hero, discovers that his twenty-month-old son has been snatched from his crib. A ransom is arranged. Yet two months later, Little Lindy is found in a ditch near his Hopewell home, several weeks dead from a blow to the head.

It takes over two years to arrest a suspect. Bruno Richard Hauptmann is caught passing one of the marked ransom bills. Press from across the world swarm to his trial. Bestselling novelist Edna Ferber and raconteur Aleck Woollcott, both hired by the New York Times to cover it, are part of the media frenzy, bickering like the literary lions they are. Did this immigrant carpenter really commit the crime? Alone? Observant sometime-sleuth Edna is not so sure.

Local citizens, whipped into a frenzy by the yellow press, march through the streets demanding Hauptmann burn. Walter Winchell takes the lynch mob sentiment national. A British waitress at Edna's hotel, who'd hinted she had priceless information that could blow the trial wide open, is murdered. Edna begins to suspect a miscarriage of justice is underway, fueled in part by anti-German sentiment, in part by class privilege.

Edna doesn't find Colonel Lindbergh the golden boy of legend. But there he is, entering the courthouse flanked by a quartet of New Jersey troopers. There's Hauptmann, handsome and calm despite his date with the electric chair—unless Edna can alter the course of justice.

Poisoned Pen Press

Edna Ferber Mysteries

Cold Morning

"Ifkovic successfully blends homicide with a loving homage to Budapest on the eve of World War I." —Kirkus Reviews

In 1914, as rumors of war float across Europe, Edna Ferber travels to Budapest with Winifred Moss, a famous London suffragette, to visit the homeland of her dead father and to see the sights. Author Edna is fascinated by ancient Emperor Franz Joseph and by the faltering Austro-Hungarian Empire, its pomp and circumstance so removed from the daily life of the people she meets. Sitting daily in the Café Europa at her hotel, she listens to unfettered Hearst reporter Harold Gibbon as he predicts the coming war and the end of feudalistic life in Europe while patrons chatter.

Then a shocking murder in a midnight garden changes everything.

Headstrong Cassandra Blaine is supposed to marry into the Austrian nobility in one of those arranged matches like Consuela Vanderbilt's still popular with wealthy American parents eager for titles and impoverished European nobility who have them to offer. But Cassandra is murdered, and her former lover, the dashing Hungarian Endre Molnár, is the prime suspect. Taken with the young man and convinced of his innocence, Edna begins investigating with the help of Winifred and two avant-garde Hungarian artists. Meanwhile possible war with Serbia is the topic of the day as Archduke Franz Ferdinand prepares to head to Sarajevo. While the world braces for disaster, Edna uncovers the truth—and it scares her.

Cafe Europa

With a foreword by David Morrell

"A pure delight." —JEFFERY DEAVER, New York Times bestselling author

It's 1955, and Edna Ferber is basking in the success of her blockbuster novel Giant. Headed to Los Angeles, where director George Stevens and Warner Brothers Studio are in the final days of filming her Texas oil epic, she is looking forward to meeting Rock Hudson, Liz Taylor, and especially the young James Dean.

But there is trouble brewing. Dean, the new box-office sensation and teen heartthrob, has been accused of fathering a child with an unstable (and recently fired) extra named Carisa Krausse. The studio fears the negative publicity will jeopardize the release of the movie. Then the actress is murdered, and James Dean is the prime suspect. He was seen at her apartment moments before Carisa's death. The police are ready to arrest him.

With actress Mercedes McCambridge as her sympathetic sidekick, Edna investigates, determined to clear Dean's name. Soon Edna finds herself exploring the troubled lives of Dean's circle of disparate friends. As she delves into Hollywood's dark side she discovers a powerful studio obsessed with a cover-up and a solution she doesn't want to accept—a solution that she, in fact, dreads.

Lone Star

Who murdered the handsome young actor? And why?

In 1940, against the chilling backdrop of Hitler's rise and the specter of another war, Edna Ferber decides to follow an old dream: to act on the stage. Selecting The Royal Family, the comedy she wrote with George S. Kaufman, for her starring role, she travels to Maplewood, New Jersey. But her escape from the troubling daily headlines is short lived. Before opening night, a mysterious understudy is shot to death, opening up a world of lies, greed, and hypocrisy.

Ferber, along with Kaufman, who is directing the production, begin a different kind of collaboration: the discovery of the murderer. As rehearsals evolve, they deal with a cast of characters who are all hiding something from their days spent in Hollywood: a stage manager, a young ingénue, an American Nazi and his boisterous girlfriend, a stagehand named Dakota who is the son of a famous evangelist, his charismatic preacher-mother, her money-bags husband, and a driven acolyte of the church. Each character, Edna discovers, has some connection with the dead man. Why have they all converged on quiet Maplewood? As Edna investigates, she realizes that the answer to the murder lies back in Hollywood.

As Kaufman wisecracks his way through the story, Edna methodically examines the facts, determined to find the answer. Opening night looms and so does World War II. Edna, resolute, believes that justice needs to prevail in a world that is falling apart.

Final Curtain

"Fans of mysteries featuring literary figures as crime-solvers will thoroughly enjoy this series." —Booklist

It's 1927, and "the Ferber season on Broadway" is about to begin. The musical adaptation of Show Boat by Oscar Hammerstein and Jerome Kern opens on December 27, and The Royal Family, her comedy of manners written with George Kaufman, opens the following night. But despite the excitement, author Edna Ferber misses both opening nights. She has something else on her mind—murder.

Edna is fascinated by the Roaring Twenties' Harlem Renaissance. In fact, she has been mentoring some of these talented, young "Negro" writers and actors, among them her housekeeper's son, Waters Turpin, and the handsome, charismatic Roddy Parsons. She heads to Harlem to take Parsons to lunch, only to discover he's been stabbed to death in his bed.

Who would murder Roddy? Suspects include the writers who meet at Edna's apartment and the young producer Jed Harris, a darling of the Broadway set who is a notoriously cruel man. With the help of Waters Turpin, his mother, and poet Langston Hughes, Edna sets off to track down a dangerous killer.

Downtown Strut

"A vivid, atmospheric mystery about 1951 Hollywood...this is a winner." —David Morrell, New York Times bestselling author

In June 1951, Edna Ferber heads to Hollywood to support her friend Max Jeffries who has found himself blacklisted after the McCarthy hearings in Washington rattled Hollywood with allegations of Communist-leaning sympathies. Edna first met Max when he worked on the 1927 Broadway production of Show Boat, and now he's brought his magic to a new production starring Ava Gardner. Walked off the Metro lot, shunned by friends, Max is "uncredited" on the film because of his political leanings. Edna's visit is one of friendship—nothing more. But all that changes when Max is murdered.

Edna begins socializing with Ava Gardner, currently scandalizing Hollywood with her affair with Frank Sinatra. Edna finds the hard-as-nails temptress a vulnerable, insecure woman whom she comes to like. Max was killed right after a public brawl with Sinatra, and Ava fears her lover will be arrested. Edna plays sleuth quietly, uncovering dark layers of greed, envy, and desire. Against the backdrop of the new Show Boat is the tawdry romance of dream-street Hollywood itself—both parts of the world of "Make Believe."

Christine Williams

Blackstone Publishing

Make Believe

In 1955, grande dame authoress Edna Ferber is visiting LA for the filming of her epic novel, Giant. Edna is looking forward to meeting Rock Hudson, Liz Taylor, and especially the film’s gifted young breakout star, James Dean.

A charismatic rebel, Dean attracts attention, devotion, and trouble wherever he goes. Now he is being blackmailed by a young extra from the movie who accuses him of getting her pregnant. The studio fears that the negative publicity will jeopardize the film’s release. Then the actress is found murdered, and James Dean is the prime suspect.

Employing her honed character instincts and her sharp nose for subtext, Edna decides to investigate the murder, determined to clear Dean’s name. But as she uncovers the dark underside of glittering Hollywood, she fears that the truth may be worse than she could have imagined.

Bernadette Dunne

Lone Star: An Edna Ferber Mystery

"Who would have thought that, of all the real-life characters to have a second life as detectives, Edna Ferber, now largely forgotten as a writer, would emerge as one of the best?" —Booklist STARRED review

In 1904, Edna Ferber is a 19-year-old girl reporter for the Appleton, Wisconsin, Crescent, an occupation her family considers scandalous for a proper young girl. By chance, she interviews Harry Houdini, in town visiting old friends. When beautiful young Frana Lempke disappears and is soon discovered murdered, the crime baffles the local police; Frana disappeared from a locked room at the high school. Edna asks Houdini for help in solving the murder. But as Edna pursues the story, she senses that she is being followed.

Though she is dedicated to her blind father, Edna's homelife is in disorder. And now the newsroom has become a hostile environment, with a new city editor determined to undermine her....

Escape Artist

"This is Ifkovic's eighth outing with Edna Ferber as sleuth, and he brings the characters of post-Great War Chicago to life: the accents, the clothes, the food, the traditions." —Historical Novel Society

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."

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.

Old News

She was 1932 Broadway's newest sensation. Then she was murdered.

Three years after the Crash that ushered in the Great Depression, Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist and playwright Edna Ferber finds herself a guest at Noël Coward's lavish birthday party. The British wit, enjoying the Christmas holiday season in New York and bracing for a trip to Cleveland in the new year, has filled his room with rich, famous folks whose lives continue in stark contrast to those being lived out in the city's streets and poorer neighborhoods.

Edna is haunted by the dark landscape of Manhattan outside Coward's elegant rooms: the snake-like breadlines, the shanty village in Central Park, the gaunt apple sellers in threadbare suits on freezing sidewalks. She has yet to be introduced to the Automat where a few cents are the difference between nourishment and starvation.

Among those who've kept fortune intact is Dougie Maddox, the financially astute but socially naïve only son of a Fifth Avenue dynasty. His widowed mother, known as Lady Maud, has kept the thirty-five-year-old on a short leash, but Dougie has crossed paths with Belinda Ross, the new Broadway songbird. He's mesmerized by her, a woman flagrantly courted by other men. But Belinda seems besotted by Dougie. Gossip flourishes—she has a shadowy past and a producer brother anxious to break onto the Great White Way.

When Belinda is found strangled late one night in a Times Square Automat, jealous, hot-tempered Dougie is the prime suspect. But Noël, who had befriended him, and Edna, who likes him, team up to clear Dougie's name. Their investigation inevitably takes them deep into Belinda's circle and her past.

As the crowds in Time Square ready for a half-hearted New Year's celebration, are Noël and Edna watching the last act of a New York Othello, or is there some other killer-maybe more than one-afoot on the icy pavements of New York City?

Edna Ferber Mysteries - The book series

Edna Ferber Mysteries - The book series

Edna Ferber Mysteries books in order

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