A Front-Page Murder by Fiona Veitch Smith

 

Poppy Danby Investigates #1

288 Pages

Publisher: Bonnier Books UK | Embla Books

Publishing Date: September 24, 2024

Previously published as The Jazz Files

 

Blurb

London, 1920. Starry-eyed aspiring reporter Poppy Denby emerges from the steam of the Edinburgh-London train onto the platform at King's Cross with nothing but a trunk of old notebooks and a heart full of dreams. She swaps her quiet northern hometown for the Big Smoke to act as companion for her ailing (but ever-sharp) Aunt Dot, a pioneering Suffragette and former West End leading lady.

She may only be twenty-two, but Miss Denby knows what she wants and quickly lands a job at the Daily Globe. She expects she's going to have to pull up her stockings and work twice as hard as her male colleagues, but what she is not ready to deal with is murder.

It's only Poppy's first day on Fleet Street when one of the Globe's senior reporters falls to his death from the highest staircase - just moments after receiving a mysterious note. Poppy is tasked with finishing his article involving the mysterious death of a suffragette seven years earlier, about which some powerful people would prefer nothing to be said. Did old Bert Isaacs get too close to a scoop?

As Poppy investigates, she is thrown into a world of hard-drinking newspapermen, flappers and jazz clubs, and learns she must tread very carefully indeed. Luckily, she has her new-found friendship with the terribly dashing Globe photographer Daniel Rokeby who seems terribly eager to lend a helping hand...

But first of all, she's got a murder to solve and this might just make the front page.

 

Review

This book was previously published as The Jazz Files.

When Poppy Denby arrives in London to stay with and assist her wheelchair-bound Aunt Dot she meets a dashing young press photographer named Daniel Rokeby in the train station. The encounter makes Poppy wonder what it would be like to be a journalist. So when Aunt Dot and her companion Grace Wilson, who were pioneering suffragettes before the First World War, encourage Poppy to look for a ‘real’ job, Poppy applies to the Daily Globe newspaper. Rollo Robinson, the owner and editor of the paper where Daniel is also employed takes Poppy on as his assistant but what initially was meant to be a secretarial job to organise and clear the files in Rollo’s office soon turns into an investigation when the political editor falls to his death on Poppy’s first day.

Convinced that the fall was no accident and encouraged by Rollo, Poppy dives into an investigation that is connected to her aunt’s past as a suffragette and the events that put her in a wheelchair. It will also take Poppy into London’s theatrical scene, bring her face to face with a lord who detests the suffragette movement, and will see her travel to Paris. And that’s just for starters. Poppy’s opportunity to prove herself as a journalist is a danger-filled rollercoaster both for her and for the reader.

I struggled a bit with that synopsis. There is a lot happening in this story and I’m not sure I could summarize it all without either spoiling the story and/or confusing readers of this review. There are also many characters to keep track of, both fictional and taken from real life. For example, Charlie Chaplin and Marie Curie make a supporting appearance on these pages. So, it is very helpful that the book starts with a list of characters, indicating whether they’re real or fictional, and that at about 70% into the story Poppy and Rollo, her boss, create and discuss a timeline that summarizes all the events both past and present that have come to pass up until that point.

This book is more crime-caper than mystery since most of the villains in this story are obvious from the start. What’s more, Poppy was a bit too much ‘do first, think later’ kinda girl for my liking, but the story flew across the pages and there wasn’t a boring paragraph.

Long review short: while I did roll my eyes on quite a few occasions while reading A Front Page Murder, I had a hard time putting this book down. This story is pure entertainment for anybody who enjoys their mysteries with a generous helping of shenanigans. And while I think I prefer the Miss Clara Vale mysteries by this author, I’m pretty sure I’ll return to Poppy Denby’s adventures before too long.