From Publishers Weekly
The latest of Elliott Roosevelt's ( New Deal for Death ) posthumous mysteries starring his mother, Eleanor, as sleuth offers more tantalizingly risque glimpses into the First Family's personal lives than previous titles did. In 1940, Idaho Senator Vance Gibson, feeling a little queasy, leaves a White House party only to be found by his wife Amelia in the East Room with his throat slit. Eleanor soothes the distraught widow and vows to do everything in her power to see that the killer is caught. Again teaming up with chief of the D.C. homicide division Edward Kennelly and Secret Service agent Gerald Baines, Eleanor learns that Gibson had made many enemies with his proposed insurance bill and that he had shared his bed with at least two women other than his wife. The trio probes the senator's private and political affairs, as well as those of other guests who had attended the White House dinner. At the same time, FDR tries to decide whether to run for President again and the Germans creep closer to Paris. Adding considerable spice to the tale are delicately intimate scenes featuring Eleanor with her companion, Lorena Hickock, and others in which, for instance, FDR and his secretary Missy LeHand snuggle in bed watching a John Wayne movie.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
The latest in this popular history-mystery series is set in the early 1940s as FDR contemplates a third term and Germany is about to invade France. The plot involves the murder of a controversial senator during a state dinner at the White House. Since the D.C. cops seem flummoxed by the situation, Mrs. Roosevelt agrees to lend her considerable sleuthing skills to the case. She discovers that the senator was an avaricious philanderer with a covey of coy cuties eager to satisfy his every carnal craving and that his name was being linked to some unsavory insurance-industry practices. From there, the First Lady asks a few intelligently probing questions and presto! The villains are rounded up, the crime is solved, and the case is marked closed. It's all a bit pat, but Roosevelt again conveys a wonderfully intimate and authentic picture of the FDR White House and its inhabitants. His story is well plotted, entertaining, and full of ambience, and he has used his firsthand knowledge of his parents and their political friends and foes to paint a believable and quite fascinating picture of pre-World War II Washington.
Emily Melton
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
