Two days earlier, Josie had been leading a busy, moderately happy life in 2018. She was fixing up a neglected Victorian and Googling the house’s past, which had included a double-murder at an infamous house party in 1929. Now, somehow, she’d been transported back in time to that party and she had to adjust to life before modern technology.

For the second day in a row, she woke up to the serenity/boring stillness of rural Oregon. There was no phone to check for texts. No Netflix to continue her binge of “The Crown.” No debit card – no money – and, unfortunately, not much hot water in the bathroom which had been the height of sophistication in 1929, but paled in comparison to the one she had back home.

After taking a lukewarm shower, she dressed in a borrowed drop-waist dress and tied her hair back, cursing the lack of hair product and hairdryer. She thought about how weird and wonderful it was to not be wearing jeans and a t-shirt.

But that was far from the only difference between the past and present. She’d never realized just how much she took modern conveniences for granted until she didn’t have any.

Prohibition was the law of the land, and while her host was rich enough to get Canadian Club gin smuggled into the party, there was plenty of the homemade stuff, as well. And that stuff smelled like something you’d clean drains with.

She took a trip into town in a car which didn’t have seatbelts and a driver who went too fast on winding country roads. There was no Starbucks (!), but there was a really cute diner which served hot coffee and a club sandwich for 35 cents. The coffee came in handy because she had a bit of a headache from the drain-cleaner gin (she’d had a few drinks the night before) and Advil hadn’t been invented yet.

After lunch she went back to the house, where she had to change clothes for an afternoon game of croquet with more gin. One of the guests, a U.S. Senator, was cheating and she wondered if he might be the murderer. Not necessarily because of the cheating, but because of being an elected official.

It was so weird that no one was checking their phone or texting. It was a welcome change from modern life. Odd, but welcome.

After croquet, the guests went back to their rooms to prepare for cocktails and dinner – which required changing clothes again. She wasn’t sure how anyone found the time for murder when they were changing clothes so often. While she was there, she tapped the walls in her room looking for a secret portal back to 2018, but ended up just getting a few visits from worried maids wondering why she was doing all that knocking.

After cocktails (the drain-cleaner gin was growing on her), someone put a record on the Victrola. David Remington, the house’s owner – and the man who was later blamed for the murders – swept her into a tango. Modern-day life had a lot of advantages. But one thing it didn’t have in abundance was handsome men in tuxedoes who really knew how to dance.

As Josie was dipped by the handsome murder suspect, she had to wonder whether there might be some advantages to the past after all.

You can read more about Josie in The Tycoon Murderer, the first book in the NEW “Remington Mansion” mystery series.

When Josie Matthews buys a Victorian mansion with a notorious past, she hopes to turn it into a successful inn. While she expects all the headaches of renovating an old house, she isn’t prepared to be sent back in time to the site of a double-murder which occurred at the mansion in 1929. While the murders were never solved, they were believed to have been committed by Wall Street financier, David Remington, forever known as the Tycoon Murderer.

At the height of the Roaring Twenties, David Remington has invited several friends and acquaintances to a house party, including a Chicago bootlegger and his moll, a Broadway playwright and his best friend, a corrupt U.S. Senator and his wife, a handsome silent screen star and a disgruntled federal agent. After a mysterious woman arrives uninvited, guests start dying one-by-one, making everyone wonder who will be next.

Determined to solve the murders before being sent back to her own time, Josie investigates the crimes and tries not to be the next victim. But the biggest mystery is whether David Remington was falsely accused or whether he truly is the Tycoon Murderer.

The Tycoon Murderer is a time-travel romance/cozy mystery with a retro flair. It contains mild violence, humor and a great deal of bootleg booze.

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Meet the author
Maureen Driscoll is an Emmy-nominated writer, whose credits include MADtv, Jimmy Kimmel Live and Nickelodeon’s BrainSurge. After 15 Regency Romance novels, she has written her first cozy mystery, The Tycoon Murderer. It’s sort of like what would happen if Bridget Jones found herself in an Agatha Christie novel. Please find Maureen on FB at Maureen Driscoll Author; on Twitter @MaureenDriscoll; and on her neglected blog MaureenDriscollRomance.wordpress.com.