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Summary
Summary
"Inspired by a real-life unsolved mystery, this mesmerizing novel features characters that make a lasting impression."--PEOPLE MAGAZINE
"More meticulously choreographed than a chorus line. It all pays off."--THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW
They say behind every great man, there's a woman. In this case, there are three. Stella Crater, the judge's wife, is the picture of propriety draped in long pearls and the latest Chanel. Ritzi, a leggy showgirl with Broadway aspirations, thinks moonlighting in the judge's bed is the quickest way off the chorus line. Maria Simon, the dutiful maid, has the judge to thank for her husband's recent promotion to detective in the NYPD. Meanwhile, Crater is equally indebted to Tammany Hall leaders and the city's most notorious gangster, Owney "The Killer" Madden.
On a sultry summer night, as rumors circulate about the judge's involvement in wide-scale political corruption, the Honorable Joseph Crater steps into a cab and disappears without a trace. Or does he?
After 39 years of necessary duplicity, Stella Crater is finally ready to reveal what she knows. Sliding into a plush leather banquette at Club Abbey, the site of many absinthe-soaked affairs and the judge's favorite watering hole back in the day, Stella orders two whiskeys on the rocks--one for her and one in honor of her missing husband. Stirring the ice cubes in the lowball glass, Stella begins to tell a tale--of greed, lust, and deceit. As the novel unfolds and the women slyly break out of their prescribed roles, it becomes clear that each knows more than she has initially let on.
With a layered intensity and prose as effervescent as the bubbly that flows every night, The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress is a wickedly entertaining historical mystery that will transport readers to a bygone era with tipsy spins through subterranean jazz clubs and backstage dressing rooms. But beneath the Art Deco skyline and amid the intoxicating smell of smoke and whiskey, the question of why Judge Crater disappeared lingers seductively until a twist in the very last pages.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Lawhon's disappointing debut novel reimagines the 1930 disappearance of justice Joseph Crater, an unsolved crime that fixates armchair detectives to this day. Set among the speakeasies and society soirees of Jazz Age Manhattan, the story also winds its way through the cramped tenements of the Lower East Side and goes behind the scenes of Broadway spectaculars. One August night, Joseph Crater leaves Club Abbey, a speakeasy owned by notorious gangster Owney Madden, and is never seen again. There are rumors of political corruption and shady connections with the criminal underworld, but the story centers on three women in his life-his wife, Stella; his mistress, showgirl Ritzi; and his maid, Maria. The three of them, all severely affected by his disappearance, must deal with the unexpected consequences, while trying to decide if there is a chance that he might still be alive. Stella hides in her Maine vacation home to avoid being harassed by police detectives and journalists. Ritzi shoulders a grueling life that is nothing like the glamorous starlet's existence that she dreamed of. Maria, whose husband is a detective assigned to the Crater case, works on starting a family while managing two jobs. These women do everything they can to protect themselves and their families from the malevolent men who let nothing stand in the way of them and their money. A fascinating story, but rendered colorless by its lack of momentum and stock characters. (Jan.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Kirkus Review
Lawhon (Eye of the God, 2009) offers a fictional solution to the never-solved disappearance of New York Supreme Court Judge Joseph Crater in 1930, a headline story in its day. For 38 years, the judge's widow, Stella, makes annual visits to toast him at Greenwich Village's Club Abbey, the mobster-owned speak-easy frequented by Joe Crater in 1930. Dying of cancer in 1969, she invites Jude Simon, the detective assigned the Crater case, to join her and tells him what really happened. Cut to 1930: Joe cuts short his visit to Stella at the couple's Maine cottage to return to NYC alone after receiving a mysterious phone call. The Craters' maid, Maria, coincidently married to Jude, is cleaning their Fifth Avenue apartment when she walks in on Joe's mistress, a showgirl everyone calls Ritzi, naked in the conjugal bed. Joe warns Maria to keep her mouth shut before he and Ritzi head out. After having dinner with pal William Klein, Joe and Ritzi end up in a Coney Island hotel. When there's a knock on the door, Ritzi hides in a cabinet under the bathroom sink while two men savagely beat Joe before taking him away. She and Klein claim they spent the night together to give each other alibis when questioned. Stella returns to NYC briefly and finds a stash of money and documents that Maria knows Jude, of all people, placed in the Craters' bureau (but he doesn't know she knows). Stella hides from the grand jury when it convenes. Ritzi, newly pregnant, tries to hide from the mobster who controls her. Maria and Jude hide their secrets from each other. An author's note at the end explains who was real and who is fictional in the labyrinth of what ifs, but only Ritzi's story (she was real, but her storyline is imagined) carries any dramatic weight. There is some cheesy fun to be had here with Prohibition mobsters and politicians, but the plot and prose are pedestrian.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
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. It's 1930, and a corrupt judge has gone missing. Newly promoted police officer Jude Simon is assigned the case and hunts among the speakeasies, Broadway theaters, and wealthy apartments of New York, only to be blocked at every turn. He's stymied in particular by the three women in the judge's life: his jaded wife; his sly mistress; and worst of all, his frightened maid, who happens to be Simon's wife. The women's stories throw a harsh light on New York in the 1930s, when gangsters ruled the city and women were pawns in their games. 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.--Weber, Lynn Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
POOR JUDGE CRATER. Famous for decades after his mysterious disappearance in 1930, he's mostly forgotten today, long ago replaced in the cultural consciousness (and joke book) by Jimmy Hoffa. But good crime stories don't stay buried, and Ariel Lawhon's new novel, "The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress," digs up the case of the so-called Missingest Man in New York and feasts on its bones. Joseph Force Crater was a New York State Supreme Court judge with snappy suits, questionable ethics and the face of Golda Meir. On the night he disappeared he went out to dinner with his lawyer and a showgirl. He was supposed to go to a play, but he never saw the curtain go up. Somewhere between the chophouse and the theater, the judge disappeared. His body was never found. The case became a national tabloid sensation, and not just because more and more people needed newspapers to line the interiors of their Hooverville shacks. This case was an à la carte menu of the era's social hot buttons: chorus girls, speakeasies, bootleggers, Tammany Hall corruption, nattily clad gangsters and irritating rich people. Lawhon populates her book with both real and fictional characters, practically all of them shady. The judge himself is a bit player, quickly dispatched. His wife, Stella, scrambles to protect her assets and reputation. His mistress, Ritzi, is under the thumb of a notorious gangster who will certainly kill her if he finds out she was with the judge that night. Crater's maid, Maria, is married to one of the detectives investigating the judge's disappearance, but isn't sharing what she knows. Each woman clings to a piece of the puzzle that, put together, could solve the crime. Constrained by the era and their circumstances, the three are smarter than their prescribed roles and itch for more, like actresses waiting out the run of a bad show. While the judge's sudden exit creates complications for each of them, it also creates opportunities. Stella feels it when she walks into the speakeasy her husband visited the night he went missing. "She could practically taste each chord change, that little pause in the air before she inhaled and then the new swell of music." She's seeking an audience with Owney Madden, a real-life New York gangster and owner of the fictional Club Abbey (in fact, he owned the Cotton Club), a location central to the book. Below street level, with embossed copper ceilings, red shaded table lamps and a heavy-browed bouncer who demands your password at the door, this speakeasy is the height of Prohibition chic. The skinny teenager singing onstage? That's Billie Holiday. Owney Madden makes an appearance in each of the women's lives, playing the part of the Big Bad Wolf. But there's more here than meets the eye. Lawhon has a gift for lean banter and descriptive shorthand. A showgirls' dressing room is littered with "Makeup. Trashy magazines. Cigarette butts. Stockings and high heels and underwear." But don't let Lawhon's straightforward style and narrative restraint fool you. This book is more meticulously choreographed than a chorus line. It all pays off. Clues accumulate. Each scene proves important. Everyone lies. Once the rabbit is out of the hat, everything takes on a different texture, reorganizes and makes sense. A second reading, like a second cocktail, is almost better than the first. "What is it with you and graveyards?" the maid's husband asks her at one point. "They fascinate me." "Dead people fascinate you?" "No. The stories they leave behind." CHELSEA CAIN'S next thriller, "One Kick," will be published in August.
Library Journal Review
Inspired by a real-life unsolved mystery, Lawhon (Eye of God) hauntingly reimagines the disappearance of New York State Supreme Court associate justice Joseph Force Crater. Plagued by rumors of Tammany Hall corruption, Crater stepped into a cab one steamy August night in 1930 and vanished. Three women in his life-cool, Chanel-clad Stella, his wife; leggy showgirl Ritzi, his mistress; and humble, part-time tailor Maria, his maid-posit possible outcomes. They all have secrets and a credible reason for revenge. The three voices are skillfully brought to life by Ann Marie Lee. VERDICT Recommended for readers who enjoy historical mysteries with a noir touch, though the author could have made more of the zeitgeist. End-of-book resources including the author's note were not recorded.--David Faucheux, Lafayette, LA (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
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." "Stella." Jude touches the brim of his hat in greeting. He takes stock of her shriveled body. Tips his head to the side. "It's been years." "You were here the first time, makes sense that you'd be here the last." Stella lifts her glass and takes a sip of whiskey. Shudders. "Call it a deathbed confession." Jude surveys the room through the weary smoke. The regular Thursday night crowd, a few women, mostly men are scattered around in groups of twos and threes drinking longnecks and griping about the stock market. "This isn't exactly a church and I'm not much of a priest," he says. "Priest. Detective. What's the difference? You both love a good confession." His shoulders twitch--a doubter's shrug. "I'm retired." Stella pulls a cigarette from the pack and props it between her lips. She looks at him, expectant. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a tarnished silver lighter. Something like a smile crosses his face and then melts away. He stares at it for a moment, cupped there in his palm before striking it with his thumb. Jude used to be handsome, decades ago when Stella first met him, and the traces are still there in the square line of his jaw and the steel-blue eyes. But now he looks tired and sad. A bit wilted. It takes three tries before a weak flame erupts from the lighter. Perhaps his hand trembles as he holds it toward her or it could be a trick of the light. Stella tips her cigarette into the flame and the end glows orange. "You would be here tonight even if I hadn't asked you to come." Her eyes shift toward the bar where Stan pretends not to eavesdrop. "You have your sources." "Maybe." Jude hangs his fedora on a peg beside the booth and pulls a pad and pen from inside his coat pocket. He waits for her to speak. Stella lured him here with the promise of a story--the real version this time. He has been like a duck after breadcrumbs for thirty-nine years. Pecking. Relentless. Gobbling up every scrap she leaves for him. Yet the truth is not something she will rush tonight. He will get it one morsel at a time. Stella Crater picked her poison a long time ago--unfiltered Camels--and she takes a long drag now, sizing up her pet duck. Her cheeks collapse into the sharp angles of her face and she holds the smoke in her lungs for a long moment before blowing it from between her teeth. Oh, she'll tell Detective Simon a story all right. Chapter One Belgrade Lakes, Maine, Saturday, August 2, 1930 Stella slept with the windows thrown open that summer, a breeze blowing back the curtains. The sounds of nature lulled her to sleep: frogs croaking in the shallow water beneath her window, the hum of a dragonfly outside the rusted screen, the call of a loon across the lake. She lay there, with one arm thrown across her face in resistance to the burgeoning sunlight, when she heard the Cadillac crunch up the long gravel driveway. Joe. Stella sat up and threw her legs over the edge of the bed, toes resting against the cool floorboards. She pushed a tangle of pale curls away from her eyes with a fine-boned hand. Yawned. Then grabbed a blue cotton shift from the floor and pulled it over her tan shoulders. She hadn't expected her husband to come--hadn't wanted him to--but there was no mistaking the familiar rumble of that engine. She went out to meet him wearing yesterday's dress and a contrived grin. "You're back." Joseph Crater leaned out the open window and drew her in for a kiss. "Drove all night. We beat the Bar Harbor Express by an hour!" He clapped their chauffeur on the back. "We'll have to paint a racing stripe down the side of this old thing." Stella pulled the car door open and saw two things at once: he'd brought her flowers--white peonies, her favorite--and he wasn't wearing his wedding band. Again. The sight of that naked finger stripped the grin from her face. Joe climbed out and reached for her with one arm, but she took a small step backward and looked at his pants pocket. The imprint of his ring pressed round against his cotton trousers. The question that surfaced was not the one she really wanted to ask. "Did you have a pleasant trip?" He nodded. "Where did you go?" Joe's answer was cautious. "Atlantic City. With William Klein." Her voice was even, almost carefree. "Just the two of you?" Joe hesitated long enough for her to rephrase the question. "Were you and William alone?" He glanced at Fred Kahler, stiff behind the wheel, eyes downcast, and responded with a single sharp word. "Stell." It took a moment to find her breath. All that fresh air and she couldn't pull a stitch of it into her lungs. "Must you be so flagrant about it?" "We'll talk about this later." Stella heard the warning in his voice, but didn't care. She rose up onto the balls of her feet, the gravel digging into her bare skin, as anger ripped through her voice. "We have nothing to talk about!" His eyes went small and dark. Stella grabbed the car door and, with a rage that startled them both, slammed it shut, crushing Joe's hand in the frame. She heard the crunch before he screamed, and when he yanked his hand away, two fingers were bloody and mangled. Stella waited for Joe on the deck of the Salt House. It was Belgrade Lakes' only fine-dining establishment, and they'd been late, thanks to his difficulty dressing with one hand. She had refused to help him. Joe hadn't yelled at her after the incident. Hadn't called her names or lifted a hand to strike her. All he said was, "I'll need your help with this mess." Almost polite. Then he soaked his hand in the kitchen sink and waited for her to gather ointment and gauze. She had wrapped the bandage tighter than necessary, angered anew by his cavalier attitude and the way he expected her to accept that a man of his position would have a mistress. As though some skirt on Broadway was the same thing as a membership in the City Club. By the time they arrived at the restaurant, he'd created a plausible fiction for his injury. "Had a beastly run-in with a Studebaker," Joe explained to their waiter, wiggling his fingers for effect. "Damn thing tried to eat my hand for lunch." And then, shortly after being seated, he excused himself to make a phone call. Stella ordered their meal from a menu of summer fare: grilled fish, steaks, roasted vegetables, and fruit. A pleasant breeze rolled off the lake, rocking the Chinese lanterns that were strung around the deck. The red-and-yellow globes sent dancing spheres of amber across the linen tablecloths. Only a handful of the tables were occupied, and the diners leaned close over the candles, lost in conversation or in silence as they enjoyed the view. The longer she waited for Joe to return, the more they sent sympathetic glances her way. The meal arrived with wine and bread, and Stella shifted candles and silverware to make room for the ample dinner. She waited until their server departed with his tray before taking a long drink of merlot. Steam rose from the pan-seared trout with lemon-caper sauce on her plate, and she wondered what sort of mood Joe would be in when he finished his call. Minutes later, the door banged open on loose hinges, and Stella forced a smile as Joe strode toward the table, shoulders rounded forward like an ox. It was a look Stella knew well. Fury and determination and arrogance. He yanked his chair away from the table with his good hand. "I'm leaving in the morning." "Why?" "I have to go back to the city tomorrow. Straighten a few things out. I'll be back on Thursday, in plenty of time for your birthday." "But--" "Don't snivel. It doesn't become you." Joe unfolded the crisp black napkin and spread it over his lap. "You shouldn't have waited. Food's getting cold." Stella stayed in bed when Joe pushed back the covers at six the next morning. She stayed there while he bathed--the water turning on with a groan of rusted pipes--and when his toothbrush tapped against the sink. Stella stayed curled around her pillow when he rattled through the dresser and yanked his clothes from the closet. Didn't move when he nudged her shoulder or when he cursed or when he brushed dry lips against her temple--a rote farewell--his freshly shaved chin rubbing against her cheek. Not until she heard his footsteps on the stairs did she open her eyes. And only when the Cadillac roared to life outside did she sit up. Four steps brought her to the window. She wiped his kiss from her temple. "Goodbye." The last Stella Crater ever saw of her husband was a glimpse of his shirt collar through the rear window as Fred eased the Cadillac down the gravel driveway. Excerpted from The Wife, the Maid, and the Mistress by Ariel Lawhon All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
