THE BODY IN THE BIG APPLE

At one of her first jobs, a swank private party, Faith Sibley Fairchild—oblivious to her future as the caterer-sleuth heroine of nine novels (The Body in the Bookcase, 1998, etc.)—encounters her old friend Emma Morris, now Mrs. Michael Stanstead, who’s obviously stressed out and dying to tell Faith all about it. Faith would never have connected to Emma the all-day news reports on —60s radical Nathan Fox, found shot to death in a New York apartment where he lived as Norman Fuchs. But Emma reveals that Nathan Fox was her real father (once her mother’s lover), that she herself had had an abortion before her marriage, and that she’s being blackmailed with threatening notes and voiceless telephone calls. Emma, who’s kept all this a secret from her politically ambitious husband, begs Faith to find out who’s behind it all. Faith does her best, finding Nate’s adoring mistress Lorraine and Harvey, her lout of a son, and seeking out Nate’s agent Arthur Quinn, who was to handle Nate’s tell-all biography, now missing. It’s Faith, on a second visit, who discovers Lorraine in her garage, dead at the wheel, the motor still running. It takes a while, but our heroine eventually homes in on the not-too-convincing blackmailer-killer and the mundane motivation driving it all. Page’s breezy, unpretentious style, her dead-on evocation of the New York society scene of the period, half a dozen vibrant personalities, and a few toothsome recipes make for an entertaining read—despite the deficiencies of its plot.