Cleopatra's Dagger

tags: mystery-ish

from GoodReads

A journalist in nineteenth-century New York matches wits with a serial killer in a gripping thriller by the prizewinning author of the Ian Hamilton Mysteries.

New York, 1880. Elizabeth van den Broek is the only female reporter at the Herald, the city’s most popular newspaper. Then she and her bohemian friend Carlotta Ackerman find a woman’s body wrapped like a mummy in a freshly dug hole in Central Park—the intended site of an obelisk called Cleopatra’s Needle. The macabre discovery takes Elizabeth away from the society pages to follow an investigation into New York City’s darkest shadows.

When more bodies turn up, each tied to Egyptian lore, Elizabeth is onto a headline-making scoop more sinister than she could have imagined. Her reporting has readers spellbound, and each new clue implicates New York’s richest and most powerful citizens. And a serial killer is watching every headline.

Now a madman with an indecipherable motive is coming after Elizabeth and everyone she loves. She wants a good story? She may have to die to get it.

I was encouraged by Amazon First Reads last month and was eager to read this highly rated First Reads for April 2022. Alas, it is back to normal FR because the novel is lamentable. Why oh why do these authors insist on being woke instead of writing a mystery suspense novel that everybody will appreciate, not just for the stupid virtue signaling millennials and maybe some ignorant older folks.

"Gripping thriller"...where in the book? There is very little suspense because the author was preoccupied writing about clothing and New York City images in the 1880s, Elizabeth family's wealthy privilege which Elizabeth abhors and feels her moral values is compromised🙄🙄🙄, the obligatory and clichéd beautiful, elegant but cold-as-ice mother, etc. etc. I also detested the unnecessary sexual assault to make the assailant a red herring. Writing style is also not very good as she contrived to sound 19th century.

Ugly. Not recommended for normal sane people.