My parents think my job should be finding a husband and settling into the sort of life they lead, but I always knew that wouldn’t be enough for me.

Which is why I’m sitting in the newsroom of the Daily Trumpet. I work with crime reporter Ralph Kaminsky and take pictures for the paper. My name is Elizabeth Adams, but Kaminsky nicknamed me Biz. I rather like it.

Kaminsky is at his desk nursing his usual cup of coffee, eating a buttered roll and banging out a story on his typewriter. He’s a man of habit—every day for lunch he has an egg salad sandwich with onions, every afternoon he heads to the bar across the street for a shot of Old Schenley and a beer chaser and he always has a pack of Camels in his pocket. Kaminsky is predictable and there’s something to be said for that.

It is raining cats and dogs this morning. My shoes are still damp and my poor hat is ruined. The wind is howling around the news building like a ferocious beast.

The door to the newsroom bangs open and Becker, another reporter, dashes to his desk. “The East River’s overflowed three blocks inland and flooded the Consolidated Edison plant at One hundred thirty-third Street,” he says. “There’s no power above Fifty-ninth Street and the Eighth Avenue IND’s knocked out.”

Kaminsky and I exchange a glance. “Sounds bad,” Kaminsky says.

The door opens again and Mildred, the switchboard operator, sticks her head in. “Bridges and tunnels are all closed,” she says, cracking her gum and leaning into the newsroom. “Someone just called it in. And the Staten Island Ferry is stuck in the terminal. Looks like nobody’s going nowhere tonight.”

“Glad we’re inside snug as a bug in a rug,” Kaminsky says.

The phone on his desk rings. He listens for a minute then whistles and slams down the receiver.

“Get your hat, Biz,” he says. “The water’s rising fast in New York Harbor and there’s a storm surge of eight and a half feet at the Battery. The editor wants pictures and a story.”

What we didn’t know at the time was that the storm, which struck without warning, is a hurricane that would become known as the Yankee Clipper or the Long Island Express and would race up the coast costing millions of dollars in damage and taking hundreds of lives.

Or that a body would be found in a damaged mansion out in Westhampton. Only the young girl hadn’t been drowned in the storm or hit over the head with falling debris.

She’d been stabbed in the back.

You can read more about Elizabeth in Murder, She Uncovered, the second book in the “Murder, She Reported” historical mystery series, released May 28, 2019.

An intrepid 1930s Manhattan socialite uncovers deadly secrets during an assignment to the Hamptons in this riveting historical cozy mystery for readers of Victoria Thompson, Anne Perry, and Rhys Bowen.

Westhampton, 1938. To the dismay of her well-to-do family, Elizabeth “Biz” Adams is quickly establishing herself as a seasoned photographer over at the Daily Trumpet. Growing more confident in her decision to pursue a career, Elizabeth is thrilled when she and her reporter sidekick, Ralph Kaminsky, are sent to Long Island to cover the story of a young maid found dead in one of the glamorous summer homes in the devastating aftermath of the Great New England Hurricane—also known as the Long Island Express.

At first it’s assumed that the young woman was caught in the terrible storm, but when a suspicious wound is found on the side of her head, the police suspect murder. The maid’s death becomes even more tragic when it’s discovered she was pregnant, and with Elizabeth and Kaminsky at the scene of the crime, the Daily Trumpet scoops all the other papers in town.

The young woman’s boyfriend emerges as the likeliest suspect. But as Elizabeth follows the story, she begins to wonder whether someone in the household of the maid’s employers might be responsible—someone who’ll stop at nothing to keep the truth about the baby’s paternity hidden. . . 

Purchase Link
# # # # # # # # # # #

About the author
Mystery writing lets Peg indulge her curiosity under the guise of “work” (aka research). As a kid, she read the entire set of children’s encyclopedias her parents gave her and has been known to read the dictionary. She put pen to paper at age seven when she wrote plays and forced her cousins to perform them at Christmas dinner. She switched to mysteries when she discovered the perfect hiding place for a body down the street from her house.

When she’s not writing, she spends her time reading, cooking, spoiling her granddaughter and checking her books’ stats on Amazon.

A former Jersey girl, Peg now resides in Michigan with her husband and Westhighland white terrier, Reg. She is the author of the Gourmet De-Lite series, the Lucille series, the Cranberry Cove series, the Farmer’s Daughter series, the Murder, She Reported series and the Sweet Nothings Lingerie series (written as Meg London).

To learn more about Peg, visit her website at pegcochran.com.

All comments are welcomed.