The Boy in the Red Dress

Product Description

A Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue meets Miss Fisher’s Murder Mystery in this rollicking romp of truth, lies, and troubled pasts.

New Year’s Eve, 1929.

Millie is running the show at the Cloak & Dagger, a swinging speakeasy in the French Quarter, while her aunt is out of town. The new year is just around the corner, and all of New Orleans is out to celebrate, but even wealthy partiers’ diamond earrings can’t outshine the real star of the night: the boy in the red dress. Marion is the club’s star performer and his fans are legion–if mostly underground.

When a young socialite wielding a photograph of Marion starts asking questions, Millie wonders if she’s just another fan. But then her body is found crumpled in the courtyard, dead from an apparent fall off the club’s balcony, and all signs point to Marion as the murderer. Millie knows he’s innocent, but local detectives aren’t so easily convinced.

As she chases clues that lead to cemeteries and dead ends, Millie’s attention is divided between the wry and beautiful Olive, a waitress at the Cloak & Dagger, and Bennie, the charming bootlegger who’s offered to help her solve the case. The clock is ticking for the fugitive Marion, but the truth of who the killer is might be closer than Millie thinks.

From School Library Journal

Gr 9 Up—It’s New Year’s Eve 1929, and street-smart teen Millie Coleman is running her aunt’s lowbrow speakeasy in New Orleans, ensuring the hooch is flowing and her customers are happy while watching her best friend, Marion, nee Robert, delight audiences with song when he takes the stage in a gorgeous red dress. When a wealthy debutante from Marion’s past plunges to her death from the club’s balcony, Millie springs into action to protect him and find the killer. With help from barmaid and sweetheart Olive, who has brown skin; Italian American friend Bennie; and her on-again, off-again mother, Millie uncovers the deceased’s secrets and risks her own safety to save Marion. Lambert’s debut YA mystery is a cohesive, fast-paced story that introduces readers to a unique time and place. Millie and Robert are white. VERDICT The book is replete with colorful swells, debs, and bootleggers, but Millie steals the spotlight as a resilient, independent young woman who is not afraid to scale a trellis or sneak into a Confederate cemetery seeking the truth.—Gillian D’Ambrosio, Rutgers Univ., NJ

Review

Raves for The Boy in the Red Dress:

“A twisty Jazz Age mystery with a diverse cast of characters, and an exciting NOLA setting that comes alive. Perfect for fans of
Veronica Mars and
The Gentleman’s Guide to Vice and Virtue.” — Kerri Maniscalco, #1
New Year Times and
USA Today bestselling author of the Stalking Jack the Ripper series

About the Author

Kristin Lambert has a BA in journalism and creative writing. She lives in the South with her husband, two daughters, two cats, a sewing machine, and a truly absurd amount of creepy old dolls.
The Boy in the Red Dress is her debut novel.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

“What’s going on here?” I called out, and Vanderbilt turned to stare at me, his face pale in the light of the two naked bulbs hanging from the hallway ceiling. His mouth opened, but no sound came out, and he pressed a fist against it as if he might be sick.
He turned away again, doubling over and retching. And then I saw the bright shape under the silvery moonlight, motionless on the damp gray cobblestones.
My footsteps slowed. The night enveloped me like a giant clammy fist. A cacophony of champagne pops, happy shouts, and jazz rose up to meet midnight in the crowded streets all around us, but here in this sheltered courtyard, no one acknowledged the time. The air smelled sharply of vomit, thanks to Vanderbilt, and something else underneath it I couldn’t place and didn’t want to name.
I knew this courtyard at night. It was the place where rats skittered when I dumped the mop water or took out tr