The Night Clerks
When an aspiring actress, employed in New York’s prestigious Essex House Hotel, is murdered, a dedicated investigator exonerates her wrongfully accused lover, a college student from the blue-collar Queens neighborhood of Astoria. At the time of the crime, 1961, there were strong taboos regarding sexual orientation - revelation resulted in social, economic, and political reprisal. In the search for the killer, that world is visited, and insensitively handled by the NYPD in this page-turning thriller.
The story’s surprising developments focus on the Essex House and the New York Public Library, where closet doors are opened on the murder suspects revealing the victim’s surprising other life. Before the case is cracked a leading suspect is killed.
This murder mystery goes back to a colorful and exciting, but, albeit, different, post-World War II, New York, but in the journey the reader is introduced to interesting, gritty, sympathetic, and well-defined characters spouting humorous pithy dialogue.