Good news! The ebook version of The Impersonator is available FREE for 3 days on amazon. This is the first in my Roaring Twenties series and the book that won the national award for Best First Crime Novel in 2012. Order quick!! https://www.amazon.com/Impersonator-Roaring-Twenties-Mystery-ebook/dp/B0B7Z2BN6M/ref=sr_1_2?crid=MC2IWGXBM81R&keywords=the+impersonator+miley&qid=1667304255&sprefix=the+impersonator+miley%2Caps%2C60&sr=8-2
Need a Christmas present or hostess gift for someone who likes to read? Consider giving a journey back into the Roaring Twenties via my Roaring Twenties mysteries, set in 1924 with a vaudeville and silent movies backdrop. The first in the series, THE IMPERSONATOR, won the national award for Best First Crime Novel in 2012, the second, SILENT MURDERS, had a terrific review in the New York Times.
Find them in your local bookstores, libraries, or online at amazon.com or Barnes & Noble.
Take one missing heiress, an unscrupulous uncle, and a young vaudeville performer fallen on hard times; add several murdered girls, a mysterious Chinese herbalist, and a handsome bootlegger; then move from the seamy world of Prohibition-era vaudeville to Oregon’s rugged coast, and what do you have? A formula for suspense, as Jessie finds herself torn between her deceitful charade and her determination to find out what really happened to the girl she is impersonating.
In the second Roaring Twenties murder mystery, Jessie trades her nomadic vaudeville life for a modest but steady job in the silent film industry. She quickly learns that all Hollywood scorns the Prohibition laws: studio bosses rule the police and gangsters supply speakeasies everywhere with bootleg hooch and Mexican dope. When a powerful director is murdered at his own party and Jessie’s waitress friend is killed for what she saw, Jessie takes the lead in an investigation tainted by corrupt cops. Soon tangled in a web of drugs, bribery, and greed, she finds herself a prime suspect as the bodies pile up.
The third in the Roaring Twenties mystery series takes Jessie from silent films back into the world of vaudeville to track down a performer with something to hide. At the request of her silent film star boss, Mary Pickford, Jessie uses her vaudeville talents to investigate the murder of an extra by a Hollywood actress already sentenced to death for the crime. Her inquiries lead to the discovery of a blackmailer and more than a dozen actors facing ruin or even death if their secrets are exposed. If the convicted actress is innocent, then who killed the blackmailer?
The fourth book begins in the fall of 1925 when a projectionist is gunned down in the theater booth. The killer flees to the balcony and vanishes. Jessie’s investigation succeeds where the police fail, thanks to her vaudeville skills and connections. A killer seeking revenge for an Old World massacre is targeting a group of Balkan immigrants, one by one. Jessie deduces the reason the killer is never apprehended—but fails to spot the killer until it’s almost too late. A young deaf girl whose mother has gone missing plays a significant role.
STOLEN MEMORIES, below, is not part of the Roaring Twenties series, although it is set in that decade, in France and England.
A brutal attack along the banks of the Seine leaves a young Englishwoman close to death in a Paris hospital without a memory in her head. She soon comes up against a vengeful husband who accuses her of the theft of priceless art, the French gendarmes who have linked her to a murder on the Riviera, and a scorned lover who is trying to kill her. The husband, who believes his wife’s amnesia is faked, spirits her away to an ancient chateau in the French province of Champagne, where prehistoric dolmens and standing stones dot the fields and caves hewn out of limestone are used for more than storing wine. For weeks he tries threats, bribery, and hypnosis to pry the truth out of her. As her memory returns piecemeal–some corroborating, some clashing with what she is told–she struggles to establish her identity. But who is trying to poison her and bury her in an avalanche of slate? Who is laying a trap for her deep within the wine caves of Champagne? The story takes place in 1928 against a backdrop of pagan ritual and an early Christian midsummer festival known as the Fires of John the Baptist.
Last night, I attended a wonderful musical event at the Library of Virginia that featured two groups who played and sang music from the Prohibition era. The musicians gave some historical background and told little stories about the original singers and composers, then played their pieces. So were funny, some were hokey, and the talent was terrific.
One of the songwriters mentioned Henry (Hank) Creamer, an African-American lyricist and vaudeville performer well known in his day. Coincidentally, I mention him in passing in the first of my Roaring Twenties mystery series, THE IMPERSONATOR, so I was familiar with the man. What I didn’t know was that Creamer was born right here in Richmond, VA–a nice surprise for me. One of his most famous songs was “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans” (1922), which was still popular in 1939 when it was included in a dance numbers in Fred Astaire’s The Story of Vernon and Irene Castle.
Here’s the passage from THE IMPERSONATOR that mentions Creamer. Jessie is speaking to the man she’s just danced with.
“What’s the matter?” I asked finally. “Aren’t you going to tell me how pretty my frock is?”
“Like everyone else? You can’t need that many compliments. I’ll tell you that your shoes are delightful, but I’ll wager your feet will be killing you by dinner. How can you dance in such high heels?”
The band began playing “Way Down Yonder in New Orleans.”
“Oh, that is one of my favorite jazz tunes!” I said.
“Hmmm, yes. Sadly, this is not a jazz band, and I’m afraid poor Hank Creamer wouldn’t recognize his own song if he were here tonight.”
I laughed. “You’re right, this is awful. Let’s sit.” We moved to the nearest table and I couldn’t resist saying, “As a matter of fact, I know Hank. He’s written a number of popular songs and is a talented song-and-dance man himself.”
“He’s a friend of yours?”
“I haven’t run into him in a while, but yes, we’ve shared billing a few times.”
“But I—but, I thought he was colored?”
“He is.”
“Oh my god,” he said, clearly horrified. “How very . . . interesting.”
During Prohibition, the federal government tried to prevent illegal booze coming into the country on boats by turning enforcement over to the Coast Guard. Sadly, the Coast Guard was very small and very ineffectual. Any boats they seized were then sold at public auction, almost always back to the original owner, who was usually the only bidder and who continued with his import business. One example, cited in Last Call, is that of the Underwriter, a ship seized in the Long Island Sound 4 times in one year and auctioned 4 times, returning to rumrunning each time.
Making matters worse, the Coast Guard seamen were paid $36 a month–even in the 1920s, this was lousy pay–which meant it was laughably easy to bribe them to look the other way, just as the smugglers did with policemen. During the early years of Prohibition, there were so few Coast Guard boats, and those that existed lacked the power of the faster, rumrunners’ boats, that any interference in the illegal importation of liquor was minimal. That’s why, in THE IMPERSONATOR, one of my characters can run liquor from Canada to Oregon in a yacht without any interference from the Coast Guard.
Benny Kubelsky in 1909
Benny Kubelski, born in 1894 in Chicago, died 42 years ago on Dec. 26, 1974. He got his start in vaudeville at the age of 17, playing his violin, sometimes with a musical partner. He struggled for years, changing his name to Ben K. Benny and then to Jack Benny. It wasn’t until World War I when he was in the navy and entertaining servicemen that he began adding comedy to his act. After the war, he returned to vaudeville and found greater success, but it was radio that made him a star comedian. I have many fond memories of watching him on television–his humor and sense of timing was legendary.
I use Benny as a character in my first book, THE IMPERSONATOR, when he was a not-so-great vaudeville performer in 1925.
New York’s prohibition officer Izzy Einstein styled himself the “champion hooch hunter.” He and his partner, Moe Smith, had no background in law enforcement, but who needed that during Prohibition? They developed their own techniques and methods for catching bootleggers–techniques that involved impersonation, such as my character, Jessie, would use in her crime solving. Here are a few:
Izzy and Moe disguised as a Yiddish couple.
It worked. Izzy and Moe were perhaps the most successful and notorious prohibition agents in New York City.
On a trip to Alaska last month, we sailed into a cave that reminded me of the Oregon cave I wrote about in The Impersonator . . . especially because it was lined with starfish and other sea life, like I described in the story.
As I reached its mouth, the loose pebbles underfoot gave way to rough rock and slime. My thin soles fared poorly on the jagged floor. The cavern itself was larger inside than its narrow mouth suggested, about the size of a theater stage, and as high, with starfish decorating its walls and crevices. I called to myself and my own voice answered in the emptiness. I picked my way about halfway in until I could see the back wall, then turned back into the sun. No clues there.
. . . and later . . .
It looked like Nature had built herself one of those pointed-arch cathedrals I had seen in Oliver’s travel books and decorated its wet walls with frescoes of colored algae, red and white barnacles, and starfish. A narrow ledge, smooth from centuries of erosion and slippery with strands of green slime, skirted the north side of the cave all the way to the back. A few feet below, the rising sea churned like boiling water, even on a relatively calm day like today. The waves broke against the cave’s mouth and sloshed noisily inside, each one bringing the water level closer to covering my walkway. I had arrived just in time. It wouldn’t be long before the ledge was submerged. I wondered whether high tide regularly filled the cave, and one glance at the barnacles stuck high on the walls answered the question. 
In my first Roaring Twenties book, THE IMPERSONATOR, I mentioned an act I called the Cat Circus. It had a young man named Walter who ran it, and one of Jessie’s friends, Angie, falls in love with Walter and leaves the act to join his Cat Circus. Angie and Walter appear briefly in the second book, SILENT MURDERS, when Angie helps send Jessie some information from Chicago, where the Cat Circus is playing.
Well . . . I made up the act, of course, but here it is, the real thing–the Amazing Acro-Cats! They came to Richmond two weeks ago while I was, sadly, on vacation. When I saw the article in the newspaper, I immediately thought: Walter and the Cat Circus has come to town! The Acro-Cats have a female trainer, however. It’s Samantha Martin, and she has trained a dozen or more cats to do tricks (when they feel like it). Performances took place through June 21 at the Richmond CenterStage theater. See http://www.richmondcenterstage.com for details. Maybe they’ll return next year and I can see them.
“The Amazing Acro-Cats are opening in Richmond today and, true to their name, their show features more than a dozen “amazing” cats performing acrobatics and tricks.
There’s Alley, who is a Guinness World Records holder for longest jump made by a cat; Tuna, leader of Rock-Cats, the world’s only cat band; and Sookie, who plays the chimes, to name a few.
The show is the brainchild of Samantha Martin, Chief Executive Human of The Amazing Acro-Cats, who trained all of her show cats — and rescued them all as well.
“I’ve been training animals since I was 10,” Martin said. “I started training the family dog.”
A lifelong animal lover, Martin said she started asking for a cat as soon as she was old enough to talk.
Cats, however, weren’t how the Chicago-based trainer got her start.
“I started training rats,” she said. “When I got out of college and moved to Chicago, I started my training business with rats” for television and film performances.
It was a fortuitous pet rescue, 10 years ago, that led Martin to cat training. “A very special cat came into my life,” she said.
So Martin made the shift from rats to cats. “Cats are actually the second-most requested animal” for movies and TV, she said. “You have to keep them working. Keep them socialized.”
Putting on a performance when her cats weren’t booked for TV or film kept their skills sharp, Martin said. But it wasn’t always easy.
“The show was a disaster in the early days. I was trying to figure out how to get these cats to do what I needed them to do. Cats are a little bit unpredictable. If someone showed up to a show with balloons — or if a clown showed up, the cats would be like, ‘I’m out of here,’ ” she said.
That’s why Martin introduced a chicken into the show. Yes, a chicken. Chickens, apparently, are much better behaved than cats, so if a show starts to go south, Martin knows she can bring out the chicken and save the day.
These days she’s on her third chicken, Cluck Norris, who plays the cymbals and tambourine in the Rock-Cats rock band, but a chicken has been part of The Amazing Acro-Cats since the very beginning.
The chicken even travels along with Martin and her 14-plus cats on their 35-foot-long tour bus. But don’t worry; everyone gets along.
“If anything, the chicken messes with the cats,” Martin said.
And there have been a lot of cats.
In 2009, Martin started fostering cats in addition to her regular performers. She was looking to add another performer, so she fostered a litter of kittens to see which one worked out. For the rest, she helped find their “forever homes.”
It’s a trend she continues — fostering whole litters of kittens and taking them on the road, hoping to find adoptive families for the animals after the shows.
In fact, in four years Martin has found “forever homes” for more than 150 cats and kittens — all of which come complete with some basic training from Martin.
“Every cat can be trained to do something,” she said.
Martin builds her show around that philosophy, working with each cat’s existing personality to develop performances.
“Some cats have different energy. I train active cats to do active things; cats that like to use their paws get trained for paw tricks. Some cats just like to do the bare minimum,” she said.
For Martin, training is an essential part of cat ownership. And she starts all of her cats off with one simple trick — one that could save their life one day: getting into their carrier.
To do this, Martin uses a whistle and then rewards the cat with a treat — semisoft chewables — when it gets inside.
“It usually takes three training sessions to get them to go in there,” she said.
For the rest of their training and for the shows, Martin uses a clicker — and treat rewards. Soft treats at home and the good stuff — boiled chicken, salmon or tuna — for live shows.
Under Martin’s training — and as part of the Acro-Cats show — these amazing cats walk tightropes, skateboard, jump through hoops, ring bells and balance on balls — when they’re not rocking out in their cat band (plus one chicken), which is the finale of the show.
The Acro-Cats show is basically live-action adorable cat Internet video-watching — and proof positive that if you can’t train your personal house cat, you might not be trying hard enough.
Running through June 21, the full show is one hour — 35 minutes of performance (“due to the short attention spans of these performers”) followed by a meet-and-greet. But face it, 35 minutes of trained performance is 35 minutes more than you’ve ever gotten out of your cat.”
Did you know that June is National Audiobook Appreciation Month? Me neither, but now that someone told me, I can use it as a good excuse to give away an audiobook copy of THE IMPERSONATOR. It’s a 9-CD issue that takes the talented professional actress, Tavia Gilbert, 11 hours to read aloud–if you want a sample, the amazon.com page let’s you hear her read part of a chapter. To enter the contest, go to my web page http://www.marymileytheobald.com and click on SUBSCRIBE to add your email address to my newsletter list. I’ll choose a winner on July 10 from that list.
When the Apple Genius at our local Apple store described me to another Apple Genius as “extremely challenged,” I realized I would never be part of the computer generation. After all, I don’t like for Facebook, can’t stand Twitter, and am baffled by Goodreads; however, I do understand Pinterest. Or, at least, I understand how I can use it to support my mysteries. I’ve illustrated my books via Pinterest.
My novels are set in 1924-1925, a time no one alive remembers–even those who, like my own parents, were born in the Roaring Twenties don’t remember that era, because they were too young. And many people haven’t been to Oregon and can’t visualize the unique Oregon coast, with its amazing sea caves, immense rocks, and agate beaches. Vaudeville is virtually a lost medium–the closest thing to it is the Ed Sullivan Show, which is itself too far back for most people today to remember. So how to overcome issues like this? Pinterest.
With Pinterest, I’ve posted photos of Jack Benny, before he was called Jack Benny, when he was young and handsome. I’ve posted pictures of vaudeville children who looked like Jessie, my main character, would have looked when she performed on stage; pictures of the mercury bichloride and Veronal, drugs which poisoned several of my characters; pictures of Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin, Myrna Loy, and other silent film actors as they appeared in the 1920s; pictures of cloche hats, period makeup, bobbed hair styles, cars of the mid-Twenties, and houses where the stars lived; and the Hollywoodland sign as it originally looked. So many pictures . . . I suspect this isn’t the way Pinterest was intended to be used, but it works for me and my readers. Have a look. And let me know what I missed: is there something else you read about in the book that you think I could illustrate on these pages?
Illustrations for THE IMPERSONATOR at https://www.pinterest.com/mmtheobald/jessies-world-the-impersonator/
Illustrations for SILENT MURDERS at https://www.pinterest.com/mmtheobald/jessies-world-silent-murders/
Mary Miley's Roaring Twenties 