For readers of Nekesia Afia, Jacqueline Winspear, Avery Cunningham’s The Mayor of Maxwell Street, a thrilling, Harlem Renaissance-set mystery featuring a liberated, educated, Black woman in Jazz Age New York…and the Prohibition-era gangsters and dangerous rivals she must confront.
Harriet is settling into her new life in Harlem since her inheritance of her late cousin’s brownstone-turned-boarding house. She has also found a new boarder, Ida Coles, who is becoming a mentor for Lovey, Harriet’s bi-racial adopted sister. Harriet has earned her private investigator’s license, a rare feat for a woman of any color. Her first clients are Porter Grant and Mildred Webster, a wealthy brother and sister from Philadelphia staying at the Hotel Olga, a fancy hotel for Harlem luminaries.
The couple are searching for Millicent Webster, Mildred’s daughter, who has disappeared into Harlem with a friend of dubious character. They claim “little Millie” is in danger, but their behavior is suspicious, and before Harriet knows it, she is caught in a web of family dysfunction, deadly corruption, and threatening characters whose lives are marked by murder and money.
When a killer viciously strikes twice, Harriet knows she’s entered a dangerous world in which “little Millie” could be either perpetrator or killer—and where she herself could end up the victim.
