A female Jewish P.I finds herself involved in a deadly gang war while looking for a murder suspect in this new own voices crime novel.
Intrigued? Well read on to discover the synopsis and an excerpt from Kimberly Giarratano’s Death of a Dancing Queen, which is out February 14th!
After her mother’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis, Billie Levine revamped her grandfather’s private investigation firm and set up shop in the corner booth of her favorite North Jersey deli hoping the free pickles and flexible hours would allow her to take care of her mom and pay the bills. So when Tommy Russo, a rich kid with a nasty drug habit, offers her a stack of cash to find his missing girlfriend, how can she refuse? At first, Billie thinks this will be easy earnings, but then her missing person’s case turns into a murder investigation and Russo is the detective bureau’s number one suspect.
Suddenly Billie is embroiled in a deadly gang war that’s connected to the decades-old disappearance of a famous cabaret dancer with ties to both an infamous Jewish mob and a skinhead group. Toss in the reappearance of Billie’s hunky ex-boyfriend with his own rap sheet, and she is regretting every decision that got her to this point.
Becoming a P.I. was supposed to solve her problems. But if Billie doesn’t crack this case, the next body the police dredge out of the Hudson River will be hers.
CHAPTER ONE
June 6, 1991
Starla Wells lit a cigarette and slipped into the shadows. She pressed a spiked heel against the brick exterior of the building, and her bent knee revealed a slender thigh and a garter belt with a tiny dagger tucked underneath.
The other heel stood in a puddle of rainwater, a souvenir from an earlier thunderstorm so violent it had forced a young family to seek refuge inside the club. The mother had cast an anxious glance around the smoky interior, spotted topless dancers and men bucking their hips, and decided that they’d be safer in a minivan getting pinged by softball-sized hail.
She wasn’t wrong.
Starla had danced in too many clubs where too many men thought a striptease also entitled them to things they hadn’t paid for. Hence the dagger.
She took a drag off the cig and flicked ash to the wet concrete below. The sky was hidden by haze. What stars muscled through the Manhattan light pollution twinkled dully like the sequins on her skirt.
This was the time she liked best. After a show, still high on adrenaline, she would slink into the alley to be alone, letting the air dry the sweat that ran down her cleavage and cool the heat rising off her collarbones.
Here, she could bathe in the afterglow of a performance without judgments and jealous looks. She was Icarus without wax wings, and she would fly as high as she liked.
Starla fingered the diamond ring that hung from her neck. She reveled in how the jewel glinted under the stage lights, how it blinded the corneas of the elite set: the politicians, the Wall Street bankers, the mobsters. The eight-carat rock was integral to her act. It made her seem expensive even if everyone thought it was fake and made her appear worthy of the bills tossed at her feet. Made Neil Goff look twice.
She was no longer a two-bit stripper from the Lucky Lous. She was Starla Wells, the cabaret vixen of the Malta Club. She had men lining her pockets and lining up to take her to bed, gangsters and cops. Both sides of the law courted her favor – a far cry from her adolescence.
She smiled softly to herself. If they could see me now.
The music from the club pumped through the brick, matching pace with her heartbeat, as if inexplicably mixed in her bloodstream. Mama Ree had just begun her set, soaking up Starla’s leftovers. Starla knew that Mama Ree loathed following her, but what didn’t kill a girl…She blew out another plume of slate and dropped her leg.
Stubbing out her cigarette on a concrete block, Starla admitted to herself that she couldn’t do this gig forever. She was in her thirties, and despite the best plastic surgeon in Bergen County, her body would eventually betray her, and Neil would find a younger tramp to replace her. He didn’t have his father’s vision. He saw the club as a means to his success, but the club could be a jewel on its own.
With the right direction.
She flicked the butt into an oily puddle and fingered the diamond. That was what this baby was for. She was going to open her own place. Rule the roost. Do things her way. No Neil to boss her around. No bosses at all.
And her girls would be special. Like diamonds themselves.
She had an appointment tomorrow at the jewelers to see what the gem would fetch. She believed that it would be more than enough to buy Neil out. Wouldn’t that be something?
Starla glimpsed movement as a dark silhouette ghosted under the piss-yellow light that illuminated the club’s dumpster.
Her breath caught, a quick intake of air that surprised even her. She slipped the dagger out of her garter and gripped the hilt. “Who’s there?” Her voice sounded weak, so she tried again, deeper and throatier. “Who is there?”
The figure emerged fully into the light.
Starla exhaled again, but this time, it mimicked the sound of annoyance. She dropped her arm but kept the dagger at her side. “You have some nerve coming here after what you did to me. We had an arrangement, remember?”
“I made no such deal.”
Starla scoffed.
“Give it to me.”
“No,” Starla growled.
Two steps forward and a hand yanked on the gold chain,
snapping the delicate links. The ring fell to the filthy gutter, and Starla cried out. But it was too late. The diamond had been scooped up, and not by her.
Starla lurched forward and brandished the dagger, stabbing the air. “Give it back, or I will cut you.” She lunged again, tripping over the concrete block. Her knees hit the pavement first, followed by her palms scraping against asphalt and pebbles.
The dagger skidded across the ground, stopping only when it made contact with the dumpster.
Starla’s skin sang. She hissed as she got to her feet and hobbled toward the dagger, realizing too late that it wasn’t there when the blade burrowed into her shoulder.
Starla whirled around and stumbled in her heels. Crimson droplets fell at her feet. She pressed a hand to her shoulder, and it came away berry red, the same color as her lipstick.
Starla screamed. But the dagger came down again, slicing the patch of skin left exposed by a too-short top and a too-low skirt.
Blood oozed hot.
She staggered to the brick wall, her hand pressed firmly to her skin, but it was like trying to plug the cracks in a dam.
The dagger slid out like butter and came down again, meeting her breast, meeting a lung, meeting her hip. Starla gasped for air.
It came down again and again and again.
She couldn’t see anything but her reflection in the metal as it hacked her into darkness.
