Holly Baxter: Tears of the Dragon

Tears of the Dragon

Holly Baxter

Poisoned Pen, Jun 2005, $24.95, 314 pp.

ISBN: 1590581466

Their father died in 1927, but the four Browne sisters and their mom did not know how financially scrapped they would become until after the 1929 great crash. Now the three oldest siblings and their mother work to bring in income (the youngest is still in high school), but never know if they will get paid as even schoolteachers like mom sometimes forfeit their pay.

The prime money maker is Elodie who works as a script writer for radio. One night she stops off at the office to drop off an idea for her boss, but the elevator stops at the tenth floor instead of the fifteenth. Elodie hears noises that frighten her. She tells her friend Bernice Barker, who tells her she is being silly and gets her a gig as a waitress at a party hosted by Chinaman Lee Change, an antiques importer. When a dying man arrives at the gala, Elodie sees a link to what she heard at the office and the homicide, but also wonders if the killer thinks she saw something that would identify the culprit.

TEARS OF THE DRAGON is a fabulous Depression Era Chicago cozy that readers of historical fiction will fully gain pleasure from. The story line provides an interesting glimpse at the 1930s in the Windy City through a heroine and to a lesser degree her sisters and best friend struggling to make a living in a male dominated world in which men cannot find legal work. The mystery slowly comes into focus which enhances the strength of understanding the period and the female protagonist struggling with what to do if anything.

Harriet Klausner