Design by AM Sardar & Ash Collins
The Yankee Quartet; Four Charlotte Holmes mysteries set in the United States during the 1920s.
Chicago, USA, 1924
Charlotte is asked by her husband to help The Chicago Trumpet, a once great newspaper, now fallen on hard times.
She and Watan clash with Gordy Bennett, the tyrannical Editor, and are drawn into the case of a native American, Cherokee Joe, waiting to be executed.
As they investigate, they realise he is innocent and develop an audacious plan to restage the trial, as a stage play, to reveal the true killer.
Rehearsals don’t go to plan until Emily and Lola, Watan’s old flame, take charge.
Once again Emily's love life complicates matters, when she falls in love with a gangster, Johnny Dapper, however their romance hits an obstacle when Charlotte & Watan object.
In India, Becky arrives, accompanied by Jack Straw, a musician of indeterminate pedigree, to inform Branwell she is selling her family’s residence and divorcing him.
Events become complicated when she is kidnapped by his former lover, Durga the Dacoit, who demands a rendezvous to settle old scores.
It's a race against time, across two continents, to save an innocent man and a not-so innocent wife.
Author's Notes - Spoiler Warning
This book is the second installment in the Yankee Quartet, four stories set in the USA during the 1920s, which will traverse the great continent westwards.This book is a continuation of plots established in the last book and also establishes key points for the next book.
The Yankee Quartet was very much imagined as a connected series of books, one long journey across America from the East to the West Coast.
This book is set in Chicago during the bootleg era and is my homage to Ben Hecht's influential stage play The Frontpage, which was filmed a number of times, including the famous Howard Hawks' version, His Girl Friday, where Hildy Johnson is cast as a woman, brilliantly played by Rossalind Russel against a live-wire Cary Grant as Walter Burns. Into this I also added a musical, referencing the film Chicago, which itself was about a famous murder trial in Chicago.
Meanwhile in India I tackled Durga's absence from the last book as she kidnaps Becky and used it as a method for introducing Branwell's illegitimate son, Jack Straw.
It was great fun writing the dialogue for my protagonists Gordy, Doris and, especially Mayor Crawford, a nod to the great actor Broderick Crawford.
