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Edna Ferber Mystery #7
Poisoned Pen Press
March 2016
On Sale: March 1, 2016
288 pages ISBN: 1464205418 EAN: 9781464205415 Kindle: B01B8TA7CC Hardcover / e-Book
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Mystery Historical
January 3, 1935. The trial opens in Flemington, New Jersey,
for the man accused of “the crime of the century.” And Edna
Ferber is there to cover it. 1932. On a windy March 1 night, Charles Lindbergh, America’s
hero, discovers that his twenty-month-old son has been
snatched from his crib. A ransom is arranged. Yet two months
later, Little Lindy is found in a ditch near his Hopewell
home, several weeks dead from a blow to the head. It takes over two years to arrest a suspect. Bruno Richard
Hauptmann is caught passing one of the marked ransom bills.
Press from across the world swarm to his trial. Bestselling
novelist Edna Ferber and raconteur Aleck Woollcott, both
hired by the New York Times to cover it, are part of the
media frenzy, bickering like the literary lions they are.
Did this immigrant carpenter really commit the crime? Alone?
Observant sometime-sleuth Edna is not so sure. Local citizens, whipped into a frenzy by the yellow press,
march through the streets demanding Hauptmann burn. Walter
Winchell takes the lynch mob sentiment national. A British
waitress at Edna’s hotel, who’d hinted she had priceless
information that could blow the trial wide open, is
murdered. Edna begins to suspect a miscarriage of justice is
underway, fueled in part by anti-German sentiment, in part
by class privilege. Edna doesn’t find Colonel Lindbergh the golden boy of
legend. But there he is, entering the courthouse flanked by
a quartet of New Jersey troopers. There’s Hauptmann,
handsome and calm despite his date with the electric
chair―unless Edna can alter the course of justice.
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