Review of "Lock Every Door: A Gothic Horror Novel" by Riley Sager

Manhattan's Upper West Side is known for three elite apartment buildings: the Dakota; the twin-spired San Remo; and the Bartholomew.

Dakota (left) and San Remo

The Bartholomew is a slender, thirteen-story building overlooking Central Park West, recognizable by the gargoyles gracing its facade - the classic kind with bat wings and devil horns.



The Bartholomew is VERY exclusive, with multimillionaire residents who value their privacy. Thus paparazzi are anathema, and the staff are warned to keep their lips sealed. This includes Jules Larsen, who just accepted an unusual job at the Bartholomew.



Twenty-five-year-old Jules was doing fine until a couple of weeks ago, when she lost her job and caught her boyfriend Andrew cheating on her in the apartment they shared. With a few hundred dollars in her bank account, and bills to pay, Jules has been couch-surfing and looking for work.



A Craigslist ad for an apartment sitter brought Jules to the Bartholomew, and an interview with building manager Leslie Evelyn.



Leslie explained the Bartholomew needs a sitter for apartment 12A for three months, at a salary of $4,000 per month. Leslie EMPHASIZED that the sitter must be discreet; avoid bothering the tenants; keep mum about the building and its residents; have no visitors; and spend every night in the apartment, to discourage burglars.



Jules accepted the job despite the reservations of her best friend Chloe, who read an article titled "The Curse of the Bartholomew." It seems the building has seen high-profile suicides, and is rumored to be replete with strange illnesses, witches, accidents, murders, and disappearances.



Jules scoffs at the hearsay and moves into elegant apartment 12A, which has lovely furnishings, a beautiful view of Central Park.....



.....and a gargoyle right outside the window, whom Jules names 'George.'



Before long, Jules meets two other apartment sitters at the Bartholomew, twentysomethings Ingrid and Dylan.





Jules and Ingrid arrange to meet in Central Park every afternoon, to get away from the restrictive Bartholomew, breathe some fresh air, and chat.



When Ingrid doesn't show up after two days, and building manager Leslie Evelyn says Ingrid suddenly moved out, Jules scours New York City searching for her friend. Jules even calls on Dylan to help.



Then Dylan disappears, and Jules starts to see omens - quite literally, because the flowery wallpaper in 12A starts to look like eyes spying on her.



Ominous occurrences send Jules running from the Bartholomew, and she's hit by a car and hospitalized. (Not a spoiler, the book begins with this.)



The book then alternates back and forth between Jules' hospital stay, and her experiences as an apartment sitter at the Bartholomew.

To say more would be a spoiler, except to note: 'If it looks too good to be true, it IS too good to be true.'

As an aside, one scene made me laugh. Andrew - Jules' cheating boyfriend - catches up with Jules to 'sincerely apologize' and ask for money to help pay his rent. Jules rightly gives Andrew the heave-ho!!



The evil goings-on at the Bartholomew are ominous and I didn't guess what was happening until close to the end. I enjoyed the novel, and recommend it to readers who like gothic horror stories.

Rating: 3.5 stars

Review of "The Girl in the Green Dress: A Mystery Featuring Zelda Fitzgerald" by Mariah Fredericks

This book is loosely based on real life events. In 1950, journalist Morris Markey was found dead in his home, with a bullet wound in his head. There was an open coroner's verdict: suicide or accident.

That same year, Markey wrote a story about playboy George Elwell, who also died from a bullet wound in his head. This novel is a fictional account of Joseph Elwell's demise in 1920.

*****

Morris Markey, born in Virginia in 1899, is enticed by a WWI recruitment parade, and joins the Red Cross in 1918. Markey's job is to come out after the battle is finished, gather up what remains, and get it into an ambulance.



Unfortunately, Markey sees soldiers torn up and shrieking with pain, and the experience leaves him shell-shocked. Afterwards, in loud rowdy situations, Markey hears buzzing in his head and zones out.

After the war, Markey starts his journalism career in Atlanta before moving north. It's now 1920, and 21-year-old Markey is in New York, writing for the Daily News.



Markey can't help but compare himself to his acquaintance, F. Scott Fitzgerald, the writer everyone in New York is talking about.



For himself, Markey dreams of finding the right story, being there when the big thing happens, and telling people how it really is. This is about to occur. Late one night, Markey returns to his boarding house and sees his neighbor, Joseph Elwell, emerge from a yellow roadster with a beautiful red-head in a green and silver dress. Elwell nods to the journalist and enters his brownstone with the young lady.



Markey's heard that Elwell - a notorious womanizer - owns racehorses, plays cards, invests in the stockmarket, and teaches bridge to socialites - but only if they're pretty and only if they're married.



The next morning, Markey is woken by a woman shouting, "Help me, please, there has been a robbery, a man has been shot." The woman is Mrs. Larsen, Elwell's housekeeper, and Markey hurries across to Elwell's brownstone and offers to assist.



Markey sees Joseph Elwell slumped in the drawing room with a single bullet hole in his forehead. Rather than provide help, Markey takes the opportunity to snoop in all the rooms, expecting to find the woman in the green and silver dress, whom he thinks is the killer. There's no female - or anyone else - in the house, but Markey's happy to call in Elwell's death, scooping other reporters.



The police investigate Elwell's homicide, and Markey decides to join in, hoping to expose the culprit himself.



A matchbook from the Ritz-Carlton Hotel tells Elwell the playboy was socializing there the night before his murder. Markey learns Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald are staying at the Ritz-Carlton, and he calls on them to get entrée to the luxurious premises.





Markey observes that the Fitzgeralds had not just taken a suite at the Ritz; they had taken it over. Their living room was the size of his entire apartment, and after a party last night, "Small plates with remnants of sandwiches, bits of cheese, smears of chocolate and caviar sat abandoned on side tables, chairs, the floor, the top of the grand piano. Flutes and highballs were everywhere he looked. The ashtrays were full, and most of the plateware held cigarette stubs. Near the gramophone, a pile of records had been knocked over, sliding like playing cards across the carpet."



Markey tells the Fitzgeralds about Elwell's murder, and explains he's looking for the redhead in the green and silver dress. Zelda recalls seeing Elwell at a party in the hotel's Japanese garden, but the playboy wasn't with a girl in a green and silver dress. Elwell was with Viola Kraus, "the most beautiful girl in New York", who claims to be Elwell's fiancée.


Viola Kraus

Markey's suspicions now fall on Viola Kraus, and Zelda - who's ALWAYS up for wild adventures - decides to help Markey investigate Elwell's killing.



As an acquaintance of the Fitzgeralds, Markey gains admission to Elwells's regular haunts, like the Midnight Frolic at the New Amsterdam Theatre.....



......and the Studio Gentleman's Club on Park Avenue.



As Markey circulates in high society, he interviews Elwell's friends, acquaintances, and estranged wife Helen - who despises Elwell for refusing to support herself and their son.




Joseph Elwell's estranged wife Helen

Markey comes to suspect one person after another of killing the playboy, and most of the 'suspects' are women Elwell romanced and their jealous husbands or lovers. Nevertheless, other people are thrown into the mix as well.


Women scrutinized by Markey and the police

In the midst of all this, Markey relishes the opportunity to write article after article about Elwell's murder, galvanizing the public, who always love this kind of scandal.



Things get more complicated when Markey's upstairs neighbor, a nosybody called Arthur Griswold, is shot; and a bullet comes through Markey's window as well. In addition, Markey learns Elwell was a member of the American Protective League (APL), an organization formed during WWI. The APL identified suspected German sympathizers and worked against radicals, anarchists, anti-war activists, and left-wing labor and political organizations.



In the end, Markey identifies the killer (though Elwell's murder wasn't solved in real life.)

The most entertaining scenes in the book revolve around Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, whose lives in the roaring twenties were public performances.



For instance, at the Midnight Frolic, Scott gets drunk and strips, ready to join the dancers on the stage; and Zelda climbs on the lion statue in front of the New York Public library. The couple also make themselves the center of attention at parties, drinking and relating one anecdote after another about their escapades.





In her Author's Note, Mariah Fredericks notes there's no record of Morris Markey ever meeting the Fitzgeralds, though they had friends in common. Still, Fredericks does a fine job combining fact and fiction in this engaging story.

Thanks to Netgalley, Mariah Fredericks, and Minotaur books for a copy of the book.

Rating: 4 stars

Review of "The Oligarch's Daughter: A Thriller" by Joseph Finder

Five years ago, Paul Brightman, a New York hedge fund manager, went on the run. Paul reinvented himself as Grant Anderson and became a boatbuilder in Derryfield, New Hampshire.



Grant found work in the fishing community, started dating a schoolteacher, and blended into the town - but always watched his back.



Paul's pursuers have now caught up with him, two men are dead, and Paul is a fugitive again - with $48,000, a parka, a backpack, an apple, and a KIND bar in his go-bag.





*****

Skip back six years, and Paul is a top analyst at Aquinnah Capital in Manhattan.



Aquinnah Capital buys a table at a fund raiser, and at the gala Paul meets a beautiful Russian woman called Tatyana Galkin.



Paul learned Russian in college, and he and Tatyana chat and become friendly. The couple begin to date, and Paul learns Tatyana is a photographer; lives in an artsy apartment in the East Village; and has a dog named Pushkin.





When Paul and Tatyana become serious, Paul meets Tatyana's family, and learns she's the daughter of the billionaire Russian oligarch Arkady Galkin, who lives in an ultra-luxurious Manhattan apartment with his wife Polina (Tatyana's stepmother).



Soon afterwards, Paul and Tatyana get engaged, and Paul accepts a job at Arkady's investment firm, AGF limited.



Paul becomes wary, however, because of the secretive atmosphere at AGF, and the constant surveillance by Eugene Frost and Andrei Berzin - Arkady's Russian security experts.



Paul and Tatyana marry, and Paul is happy at home.....



......but uneasy at work, where Paul becomes aware of financial hijinks, including insider trading, at AGF limited.



Around this time, FBI Special Agent Mark Addison asks Paul to spy on Arkady. Paul refuses at first, but then agrees.



(Note: This plot point is glaringly unrealistic. Paul has absolutely no training in espionage, yet pulls off stunts like a top CIA operative.)

At the behest of Special Agent Addison, Paul goes to a storage facility and copies data about something called 'Phantom' onto a flash drive, which leads to disaster.



This compels Paul to flee, with both Arkady's people AND the FBI after him. To hide, Paul becomes Grant Anderson in New Hampshire. Now - five years later - the Russians have found Paul, and he must escape all over again.



Luckily for Paul, he has superb outdoor skills, learned from his father Stan Brightman, a brilliant computer scientist who - decades ago - became a survivalist and moved into a forest hut.



When Paul was young, Stan would take him on excursions in the woods, where they'd have to forage for edible plants and eat whatever animals they caught, which was mostly squirrels and chipmunks.



The story alternates back and forth between the present - with Paul trying to evade various people pursuing him; and the past - before Paul becomes Grant Anderson. There are lots of twists and surprises, perhaps too many, because the convolutions are hard to follow.



Nevertheless, if you can suspend disbelief, this is an entertaining espionage/adventure thriller.

Rating: 3 stars