Lady In Lilac by Susannah Shane

Lady In Lilac - A $1,000 Red Badge Prize Mystery!

Helen Varney is down to her last dollar and must vacate her rented apartment. She got a job at a chain restaurant but has low prospects. Suddenly, she smells gas and enters a neighbor's apartment to find Joanna Starr collapsed on the bed. After rescuing her, they find they each have what the other wants. Helen wants to be an actress and move into higher society as Joanna has, and Joanna wants to disappear from her life, from the excitement and danger. They look similar and decide to exchange lives.

Suddenly, Helen is rich, and the next night she has a date to meet a famous director, and finds him at his home, shot dead.

Was it his crazy ex-wife, or his father who lives next door? One of his three lawyers who were also present in the home? Who was the figure lurking in the bushes outside? Why has European film star Trudi Hess returned from Hollywood, and what is her attachment to the millionaire victim? And what is Paul Saniel's story, showing up at her new Waldorf-Astoria apartment the day before, a man who knew Joanna intimately and knows Helen is not the real Joanna Starr?

Yes, Paul knows Joanna is gone, but who is this woman pretender... a crime ring kidnapper?

Paul and Helen each think the other holds the key to the murder and to where Joanna has disappeared. The game of cat and mouse continues until they join forces to investigate the murder scene undercover. They may even solve the famous Charles Newberger child kidnapping, which seems to be connected...

There are plenty of twists as this dame in danger thriller speeds along. It's entertaining, with fast talk and lots of reveals, even a review at the end in case you missed something.

I love these breezy mysteries where fates change on a dime. One day you are a broke waitress in a rooming house; the next night you are in the Waldorf draped in furs, accused of murder, with dark bloodstains on your lilac shoes and your torn fuchsia handkerchief left next to the smoking gun at the manor house. As the complications pile up, the plot rolls on at a breakneck pace. Recommended; however, it's not a common book to find.

Author Susannah Shane wrote six other mysteries including Lady In Danger and Lady In A Million. Susannah Shane is the pseudonym of Harriette Cora Ashbrook. From 1941 to her death in 1946, she wrote under the Shane name. Before that, she was writing "Spike Tracy" detective novels under the name H. Ashbrook. Her characters are amateur investigators, like the reader, who don't have to follow police procedures.

I could hear the swell of the orchestra and the closing logo of "Warner Brothers" as the curtain (and the cover) closed.

1941 / Hardcover / 250 pages