This is Book 2 in the original mystery series starring Dorothy Parker.
It wasn’t enough that The Toy Soldier should meet his disastrous end on the heels of Felix the Cat’s mid-air explosion over Broadway at the first Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, or that the terrified big cats from the Central Park Zoo roared so fiercely at the screaming crowd, traumatizing the little children, but to add insult to injury, Alexander Woollcott is confronted with the victim of a stabbing, and Dorothy Parker comes face to face with the crazed murderer, causing them to arrive late for the big holiday feast at Edna Ferber’s apartment.
War-weary Americans take a sober look at our nation’s Bill of Rights at a time when no one cares to be sober, even though sobriety is the law of the land: The Scopes Monkey Trial has tested the premise of separation of church and state, and although sixty years have passed since the Thirteenth Amendment became law, the negro citizens of the land remain socially and economically restricted: lynchings are common, and the Klan’s political influence is rising. A shooting in a Detroit suburb would bring to light shameful racial inequality, and Clarence Darrow, who had caused an uproar at the Scopes Trial, agrees to lead a defense.
As Parker, Benchley and Woollcott search for a murderer, they discover a conspiracy. The reader is joyously carried along to Harlem’s famous Cotton Club, the opening night of Noel Coward’s new play, Hay Fever, a romp through the ‘men only’ University Club with Groucho Marx, through Hubert’s Museum and atop One Times Square on New Years Eve above a jam-packed crowd in Times Square.
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