The Filbert Steps

Author(s): Lila Blake

Location(s): San Francisco

Genre(s): Cozy Mystery

Era(s): Contemporary

Set in San Francisco’s Telegraph Hill and North Beach, The Filbert Steps follows Vivian Salvatore, a fifty-two-year-old divorcée rebuilding her life at the top of one of the city’s most beautiful stairways. With her cat, Burgess, a favorite espresso bar, and a Dashiell Hammett biography she keeps not finishing, Vivian is trying to settle into a quieter life.

Then Bradford Loeb, an ambitious developer with plans for the neighborhood, is found dead on the Filbert Steps. The police are ready to call it a fall, but Vivian notices the details others miss: a coat buttoned wrong, a cigarette where it should not be, a glove hidden in the ivy, and neighbors who suddenly have very little to say.

As Vivian follows the trail through Telegraph Hill, North Beach cafés, old family businesses, hidden gardens, and fog-softened stairways, she uncovers a community full of secrets, loyalties, grudges, and reasons to want Bradford gone.

Atmospheric, warm, and clue-rich, The Filbert Steps is a cozy mystery about place, memory, reinvention, and the question of who truly belongs in a neighborhood.

Review this Book