Ms. Dickinson's Purple & Gold Pick of the Week: Strings Attached by Judy Blundell

Kit Corrigan came to New York City to become a star.  But it's 1950 and making it big on Broadway isn't easy.  So when her ex-boyfriend Billy's dad offers to give her a little help, Kit can't refuse.  Soon, she's got herself a nice new apartment and new job as a chorus dancer at the hottest new club in town.  It seems like Kit is finally in with the right crowd to make her way to the top.  But Mr. Benedict isn't just Billy's father--he's also a lawyer with mob connections.  Suddenly Kit is in way over her head as she becomes tangled up in a web of lies, love, and murder that digs up some unpleasant pieces of her family's past.

A peek at the somewhat seedy underbelly of glamorous 1950s New York City?  Rich historical details about theatre, crime, and clothing? A sizzling mystery with plenty twists and turns? Judy Blundell's newest novel has all the elements of an exciting and compulsive read for historical fiction fans and skeptics alike!  Like her earlier novel, the National Book Award winning What I Saw and How I Lied, Blundell's new story places a young woman living during a transitional time in America's history in the middle of progressively more complex mystery that forces her to face the dark reality of the grown-up world she's entering.  Our heroine in Strings Attached, Kit, is a determined and smart young performer determined to take her small town stage success and year of dance drills to the big time in New York City.  From the opening scenes, the novel shows the difficulties facing an aspiring artist alone in the big city during the mid-20th century--illustrating challenges and unpleasant realities that remain unchanged today in many ways.  Full of rich historical details but never overburdened by such information, the narrative shifts back and forth between Kit's current life in the early '50s and her childhood growing up during the Depression.  Kit's reactions to the growing intrigue in her life illustrate an appealing combination of worldliness, courage, and naivete.  

The mysteries winding through the plot are exciting and full of unexpected twists, making this a good bet for readers who like mysteries as well as those who want solid historical fiction.  Slowly, the reader learns along with Kit that the chilling chain of events leading her to mob involvement and a murder goes back deep into Kit and her family's conflicted past and their strange relationship with the Mr. Benedict and his son Billy.  The connections between her own and her loved ones' past actions and the present danger and eventual tragedy in Kit's life are slowly revealed, making the mystery both poignant and thrilling.

If you're look for some other glamorous and gritty historical mysteries, try What I Saw and How I Lied by Judy Blundell, The Girl Is Murder by Kathryn Miller Haines, or Jillian Larkin's Flappers series.

For a compelling and thrilling historical mystery and a brilliant tale about the way dark family secrets can come back to haunt us, check out Strings Attached by Judy Blundell, on display now in the fiction section