New Book Alert: Murder Under A Black Moon (Mona Moon Mysteries) by Abigail Keam; Magnificent Murder Mystery Starring Mona Moon, The Kentucky Derby, and Alice Roosevelt Longworth
By Julie Sara Porter
Bookworm Reviews
Spoilers: Alice Roosevelt Longworth is among the most colorful and interesting of the Presidential children. The daughter of Teddy Roosevelt, she was known for her sense of style and outspoken nature. She was a fashionista of her day, even popularizing the color Alice Blue. Most importantly, she supported various causes like women's suffrage and assisting the poor. She had a particularly wild reputation to the point where her Dad said that he could manage the country or Alice, but not both.
Even as she grew, she remained involved as a prominent power broker and Washington insider. Her sauciness created many soundbites like "If you can't say anything nice, come sit next to me."
Alice Roosevelt Longworth was such an interesting figure in history that if she appears in historical fiction, she could overshadow other characters.
Well, Abigail Keam did the smart thing when she inserted her into her Mona Moon Mysteries. She pitted the historical Roosevelt with the fictional, Mona, cartographer, businesswoman, and amateur detective. In Mona, Alice Roosevelt Longworth has met her match. In Keam's Murder Under A Black Moon, the two are intelligent, wry, observant, and live for getting the last word. They are divas of the highest order who command every presence and room they are in.
Mona and Alice meet each other at the Kentucky Derby. Mona is at the Derby with her friends Willie and Dexter Deatherage, her snobbish aunt Melanie, a pair of new money Texans called Jeannie and Zeke Duff, horse trainer Rusty Thompson, and Mona's fiancee, Lord Robert Farley (who Alice is his special guest.) A very public and exciting race ends in murder when Rusty Thompson is found dead with a woman's hat pin stuck in his eyes. Unfortunately, it's Willie's hat pin and she is arrested for the murder!
With both Alice and Mona as important characters, Keam is able to provide her leads with some great zingers. When Mona's ruthless aunt Melanie says she is not interested in politics, Ms. Roosevelt Longworth responds " Politics is a bloodsport and you seem to be pretty good at bloodsports." When a detective questions members of Mona's party, Mona remarks that he sounds like a character from a bad Dashiell Hammett novel.
Alice and Mona are independent strong-willed women in the respective worlds of politics and business. So, they are aware that they have to speak up and make themselves heard otherwise the make population in charge would ignore or minimize them.
Their barbs aren't the only things that they have in common. Both are ardently political, though on opposite sides of the spectrum. Alice, like her late father, is a Republican and takes potshots at cousin Franklin. Mona however is a staunch Democrat and supporter of the New Deal. So the two get into political disagreements among their discovery of clues and dead bodies.
Naturally, their divalicious attitudes get onto each other's skin such as when Alice's bluntness does little to comfort a distraught and intoxicated Willie. Witnessing her best friend emotionally chopped down by the Roosevelt woman, Mona thinks that Alice can't hop on the next train fast enough.
Mona and Alice's mere presence causes much of the rest of the book to take second fiddle even the murder investigation. The scandalous world of horse doping and horse ownership isn't near as interesting as the other worlds that Mona peers into in other books, such as the world of Egyptian archaeology in the previous book Murder Under A Wolf Moon. If you don't follow horse racing, as I do not, you can get lost in the terminology and details.
Also, Mona's romance with Robert isn't near as interesting as it was in the previous volume. Last time, Mona was torn between her independence and accepting his proposal. In this book, now that she has accepted there is very little to do but wait for approval from his father and possibly go to England. So, their romance is simply just stalling, talking, and waiting.
However, the details of the murder itself are compelling enough. In the opposite of a locked room mystery, this murder occurs right out in the open, during one of the most famous races and surrounded by hundreds of spectators. Meaning there are more than enough suspects. One does not envy the job that neither the police nor Mona have in investigating this particular case.
The book also offers some interesting subplots, particularly in the conflict between Mona and her aunt Melanie. In most cozy mysteries, the supporting cast are usually above suspicion. They are the best friends, loving relatives, baffled police officers, and regular townspeople. It is assumed that these regulars remain in the protagonist's life and usually are neither victims nor murderers. Note, I said usually.
Mona and Melanie's relationship in this volume, while not good to begin with, is severely fractured and borders on violent. It is not too much of a stretch to assume in this or a future volume that Melanie herself could be under suspicion of murder (and it may not be a surprise to learn that she did it.)
While Murder Under A Black Moon is not as good as Murder Under A Wolf Moon, the relationship between Mona Moon and Alice Roosevelt Longworth make it shine with wit and cleverness between two fascinating women: one real and one fictional.
