Flappers, Flasks and Foul Play

Author(s): Ellen Mansoor Collier

Location(s): Galveston

Genre(s): Mystery

Era(s): 1920s

Location

Content

“Boardwalk Empire” meets “The Great Gatsby” in this soft-boiled “Jazz Age” mystery, inspired by actual events. Prohibition is in full swing in 1920s Galveston, Texas: the “Sin City of the Southwest.” Jasmine Cross, a young society reporter, feels caught between two clashing cultures: the seedy speakeasy underworld and the snooty social circles she covers in the Galveston Gazette.

During a night out with her best friend, Jazz witnesses a bar fight at the Oasis–a speakeasy secretly owned by her black-sheep half-brother, Sammy Cook. But when a big-shot banker with a hidden past collapses there and later dies, she suspects foul play. Was it an accident or murder?

Soon new Prohibition Agent James Burton raids the Oasis, threatening to shut it down if Sammy doesn’t talk. Suspicious, he pursues Jazz, but she refuses to rat on Sammy. As turf wars escalate between two real-life rival gangs, Sammy is accused of murder. To find the killer, Jazz must risk her life and career, exposing the dark side of Galveston’s glittering society.

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