Viviana Valentine Goes Up the River: A Girl Friday Mystery

In Edwards’s second outing for Viviana Valentine (after 2022’s Viviana Valentine Gets Her Man), the spunky former watch thief has become a partner at Tommy Fortuna’s PI firm in 1950 Hell’s Kitchen. Things kick off when Valentine and Fortuna are invited to a house party at the Tarrytown, N.Y., mansion of scientist Buster Beacon, who complains of spooky noises on the premises. It’s a thin pretense for dragging the two private eyes out of the city, but soon one of the house guests is poisoned, and a blizzard leaves everyone snowed in, with nearly every guest harboring a potential murder motive or illicit secret. Throughout, Valentine’s voice shifts puzzlingly from polished and proper to slangy, but much of the dialogue is quick and witty, and the mansion is a delightfully rendered setting, full of hidden passages and strange scientific devices. Fans of Susan Elia MacNeal’s Maggie Hope or Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs will want to give this a try. Agent: Anne Tibbets, Donald Maass Literary. (May)