Murder in the Red Room - Softcover

The author's mother Eleanor here solves her 10th mystery, which contains all the elements that have made the series ( Murder and the First Lady , etc.) so popular. On the eve of announcing his ill-conceived "court-packing" scheme, FDR, with a macabre sense of humor, holds a formal White House dinner for the federal judiciary. While he talks to Benjamin Cardozo and Eleanor engages in badinage with Chief Justice Charles Evans Hughes, a Cleveland mobster named "Shondor Jack" has his throat cut in the Red Room. How did the victim get in? What he was doing there? Who in the presidential mansion would want him dead? These are just some of the intriguing questions posed by this witty, entertaining and urbane tale. As the president battles Congress and the press over his court reform plan, Eleanor sorts through an unlikely ragbag of suspects, including a senator, a congressman, lawyers and prostitutes. Somehow she still finds time to fulfill her official duties, lunch with movie stars, dine with the NAACP and attend a reception for Amelia Earhartsp ok . The solution to the mystery is a trifle predictable, but sophisticated dialogue and plenty of affectionate insights about the author's parents and their era make this a delightful romp through the seamy side of officialdom.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Another of the author's posthumous novels featuring Eleanor Roosevelt, super-sleuth (Murder in the Blue Room, etc.). The murder this time is in the White House's Red Room. The corpse found there, stabbed to death, is identified as one Shondor Jack, a violence- prone pimp from Cleveland. Police Lieutenant Kennelly and Secret Service man Stan Szezygiel turn up a few suspects, most of them with Cleveland connections--Margaret Dempsey and Cristian Asman, both Harvard lawyers working in the White House; a trio of stripper-prostitutes; girl-about-town Joan Fisher; her Senator father and her onetime fianc‚ Representative Vernon Metcalf. A second murder and a closer look at some hidden relationships clear the way for an all-suspects showdown where Eleanor does her stuff. A serviceable but rather contrived plot takes second place to the intimate, behind-the-scenes details of F.D.R.'s second term and the evocation of the powerful and famous of the era. Sporadically entertaining. -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.