In Beatriz Williams's 2017 novel The Wicked City, redheaded flapper Geneva "Gin" Kelly surprised herself and everyone else by falling madly in love with a Prohibition agent. Things got (even) more complicated when her new beau, Oliver, enlisted Gin to help lay a trap for Duke Kelly, her notorious bootlegger stepfather. In The Wicked Redhead, Williams picks up both Gin's story and that of Ella Gilbert, a woman living in 1990s Greenwich Village, who suspects her building holds Prohibition-era ghosts. This second installment has as many twists as the cocktails Gin adores.
Newly separated and unemployed, Ella has only Gin's name and a racy photo to fuel her research into her building's history. Though Ella, like Gin, is connected to Williams's illustrious Schuyler clan, her narrative mainly serves to frame Gin's adventures up and down the East Coast. As Oliver doggedly pursues a liquor racket from the Gulf of Mexico to the northern Atlantic, Gin is beholden to and frustrated by his wealthy family. Like her namesake liquor, Gin and her story both sparkle elegantly on the surface and pack a surprising punch. More than just a smart-mouthed beauty, Gin is a grieving daughter, a hillbilly girl trying to build a life in New York, a brand-new guardian to her orphaned younger sister and a strong-willed woman in love. Her fast-paced, fast-talking adventures will leave readers astounded at her courage and thirsty for the next deliciously wicked romp in this series. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dream