Murder at the Breakers: A Gilded Newport Mystery by Alyssa Maxwell MYS Max

When Murder at the Breakers came across the desk to be checked in, I didn't have to think twice about checking it out myself. Only a few weeks earlier, I had toured The Breakers during an afternoon in Newport, Rhode Island. Even if the story wasn't great literature, I'd be able to revisit this amazing historic town vicariously, and while my memory of the great homes I'd seen were still fresh. Newport, as you probably know, was the summer playground of America's wealthy in the last half of the 19th century and the first decade of the 20th century. Because summers in Newport were all about one's place in high society, they were filled with large dinner parties and opulent balls. And the hostesses needed extravagant homes in which to hold them.
It is at one such event, the presentation of Gertrude Vanderbilt to society -- and the completion of the Vanderbilts' new Breakers -- rebuilt after a fire destroyed the original, that Murder at the Breakers begins. The narrator, Emmaline Cross, is a poor cousin several times removed of the Cornelius and William Vanderbilt families. Poor, relatively speaking (pun not intended but works too well to omit).  Compared to her famous relatives, she has very little and -- gasp -- she has to work! Yet she employs two domestics at her home on Ocean Avenue.

The afternoon of the ball at The Breakers, her half-brother Brady, who's slept off several benders in a unlocked cell in the local jail, asks her to keep an eye on Uncle Cornelius from 11:45 to midnight to make sure he doesn't go upstairs. At the appointed hour, Emma doesn't see Cornelius anywhere, and she makes an attempt to find Brady and warn him off of whatever scheme he's hatched. While outside looking for her brother, she notices a light in her Uncle's room, then hears shouting and a scuffle, and watches as a body plunges from the second-floor balcony and lands right at her feet. When Brady is found passed out in Cornelius's room, he is the prime suspect and is whisked off to jail, and this time the cell is locked. Thus begins Emma's quest to exonerate her brother, which she can only do by tracking down the real killer.

Emma is a strong-willed woman determined to manage and succeed on her own terms, unlike many of the young women of the times whose goal was to marry minor royalty from Europe and maintain their pampered lifestyle. She proves herself resourceful, tough and determined, and maybe a bit too stubborn, especially when she sends Derrick Andrews, heir to the Providence Sun fortune, packing.
The second book in the series, Murder at Marble House, comes out in October. I'm sure hoping Derrick comes back to Newport in that one. Every mystery needs a little romance, or is it the other way around?

A fun read and a pretty good mystery, to boot.