An aviatrix continues her family's legacy of magical investigation during Prohibition in The Improvisers, a thrilling stand-alone volume in the Murder and Magic series by Nicole Glover.
Velma Frye, pilot and former bootlegger, acts as an investigator for a magical rights group as part of her extensive travels across the United States. When she comes across an enchanted pocket watch that causes a brawl to break out at an air show, she goes home for advice; the Rhodes family has been wielding celestial magic and solving crimes since the Civil War, but this case is ultimately Velma's. When she discovers the watch is only one of many dangerous magical artifacts, she sets out across the country to track them down--accompanied, whether she likes it or not, by annoyingly persistent and charming reporter Dillon Harris.
Glover blends mystery and adventure while creating a vibrant cast of characters and expanding a narrative universe she first introduced in its mid-19th century into a new era. The intricate suspense as Velma tracks magical objects across the country and the ultimate confrontation over their theft evokes the classic thrillers of Alfred Hitchcock and Clue. Readers of Glover's novels starring Velma's grandparents (The Conductors; The Undertakers) will delight in seeing them again, but those starting fresh will also fall in love with the complex and brilliantly rendered extended Rhodes family. Fans of Maurice Broaddus, Alix E. Harrow, and the Loyal Leagueseries by Alyssa Cole should have their eye on Glover. --Kristen Allen-Vogel, information services librarian at Dayton Metro Library