Death of a New American by Mariah Fredericks

Death of a New American by Mariah Fredericks ISBN-13: 9781250152992 Paperback: 304 pages Publisher: Minotaur Books Released: April 9, 2019

Source: ebook review copy from the publisher through NetGalley.

Book Description, Modified from Goodreads:
In 1912, as New York reels from the news of the Titanic disaster, ladies’ maid Jane Prescott travels to Long Island with the Benchley family. Their daughter Louise is to marry William Tyler, at their uncle and aunt’s mansion and Charles Tyler is known for putting down New York’s notorious Italian mafia, the Black Hand.

As the family plans Louise’s upcoming wedding, Jane quickly befriends the Tyler children’s nanny, Sofia—a young Italian-American woman. However, one night, Jane is woken and investigates crying from the nursery. She finds Sofia murdered, and the carefully locked window flung open.

The Tylers believe that this is an attempted kidnapping of their baby gone wrong—a warning from the criminal underworld to Charles Tyler. But Jane is asked to help with the investigation by her friend journalist Michael Behan, who knows that she is uniquely placed to see what other tensions may simmer just below the surface in this wealthy, secretive household.


My Review:
Death of a New American is a mystery set in 1912 in New York. The story was rather sad as the person who was murdered was a likable character and the murder destroyed more than one life without benefiting anyone. There was a lot of historical detail about what was in the news at the time, from the sinking of the Titanic to a major women's suffrage march. While interesting, most of it was not directly related to the mystery. The characters were engaging, interesting, and acted realistically.

Jane was asked to discreetly investigate a murder, but this time her unique knowledge as a servant was not used to solve the mystery. She just asked questions. When Jane discovered pertinent clues, she followed up on them but we're not even told what the clue was until later. The mystery was not very complicated, so it would have been fairly easily to solve if we knew the hidden clues as Jane learned them. Though this was not a puzzle mystery, I still had two main suspects, and I was correct that one of them was a murderer.

There were no sex scenes. There were only a few uses of bad language. Overall, I'd recommend this historical mystery.


If you've read this book, what do you think about it? I'd be honored if you wrote your own opinion of the book in the comments.