[Elvira Slade Investigations 02] • Chipped Pearls

'In Elvira Slate, Jacey has created a slick 40's sleuth that could inspire the toughest 21st feminist - and a bingeworthy boxset of the highest order!'

- Celia Walden, US Editor-in-Chief, The Daily Telegraph

'Welcome back, Elvira! We've missed you.'

- Dr Stephen Wyatt, writer of Classic Chandler, BBC Radio 4 and author of The World and his Wife.

'Elvira Slate is the noir anti-heroine we've long been missing.'

- Savannah James-Bayly, Associate Producer, Queens of Mystery

All Elvira Slate wants for Christmas is to save a jazz singer from the death penalty.

Chipped Pearls is the gripping Book Two in the Elvira Slate Investigations crime series, with its distinctive female gaze on 1940s noir. By Helen Jacey, the author of the internationally acclaimed The Woman in the Story: Writing Memorable Female Characters. Fans of 1940s Los Angeles, vintage fashion and noir crime fiction are falling in love with female sleuth Elvira Slate, her complex cases, and her journey to self-determination.

Synopsis:

Christmas Eve, 1945. Elvira Slate, a Los Angeles 1940s private detective, needs a new case and fast. Her sleuthing start-up has mounting debts and as an ex-con and former gangster’s moll from London she’s not exactly qualified for the job. Elvira has totally reinvented herself to escape old enemies – the mob and the British secret services who want her to pay for old crimes.

The upside? Elvira has support; new friends, a private eye mentor, a secretary and even a secret if unsuitable lover. But fear the past will drag her always lurks. To stay safe, Elvira should stay out of the public eye, only taking on cases of low-lifers and nobodies, keeping out of the public eye.

On Christmas Eve, hotshot criminal defence attorney Sonia Parker requests Elvira’s urgent help on a murder case. Her client Dolly, broke singer in an all-girl swing band, has been framed for murder of her rich lover Ronald Hunter, one of the richest men in the city and with political ambitions. She is facing the death penalty. Hunter’s also married to glamorous and wealthy ex-starlet.

Dolly’s vulnerability and tragic childhood touch a raw nerve in Elvira who resolves to do what she can to help free Dolly. Soon she discovers plenty of suspects but as many dead ends. Not helping her investigation is Sonia’s insistence on keeping Elvira on a tight leash. The only way Elvira can solve the crime is to follow her instincts and break free. She enters Los Angeles high society at great risk to herself.

When she thinks she’s found the real killer, Elvira is shocked by a twist in the case that triggers old traumas. Soon she’s losing her grip, with personal demons and old enemies circling.

Can Elvira catch the killer before she is dragged to hell?