private detective Mel Gance has never met a face he couldn't read--that is until now, as cool, gorgeous, and uncanny hotel heiress Cecilia Le Cleur expressionlessly tells him about her father and brother, the dead and the missing. With the help of his stalwart assistant, Grace "Ace" Springfield, Gance negotiates gamblers, gangsters, thieves, and cops, doggedly pursuing the case that will soak his favorite suit in blood and mark 1947 as the spring everything changed. is a sharp, colorful, novel that trades in subversion to gently critique the noir tradition. It's also a dreamy read with lush period details, and elegant plotting. If you love crime fiction, but despair of outdated tropes, this clever anti-noir is for you." - , author of and " reads like the voiceover from an old Humphrey Bogart movie but updated for today with Stephanie Edd's distinctive flair." "Edd's 1947-set thriller features a gumshoe who could step right into the brogans of Philip Marlowe or Sam Spade. ...The author is clearly having fun: She has written a legitimate whodunit but also a sendup of the genre. It's an engrossing cable car ride, back in the world of Hammett and Chandler, with a world-weary shamus, cigarettes and fedoras, elegant and mysterious clients, and the fog always rolling in (this ain't Fresno). Perhaps Edd will send Mel and Ace on more adventures...that would be just swell. A competently constructed period thriller with all the trappings."