My name is Velma, and if I knew that tomorrow I’d go missing, I’d be quite shocked. I mean, I’ve always been a bit awry, but my life, with one small exception, okay large exception, is quite the bee’s knees. I live in the most swell place in the world, Brooklyn, in a time that is truly the cat’s pajamas, the Roaring ’20’s.

And while my dapper most definitely has some issues, he certainly has plenty of cabbage. Daddy gives me a hard time, but I do what I want, when I want, and make my own rules. Just today I got up around noontime so that I could meet up with Dottie Parker and her group of friends at the Algonquin Hotel for a bit of hooch and some lively conversation. Benchley is a bit of a wet blanket, but the wit flying around the table is something to behold, none so biting as Dottie, that wisecracker.

No sooner had they flown the coop then Zelda and Scott Fitzgerald came downstairs from their room looking quite the worse for the wear, it obviously having been another wild night for them. I wondered a bit at what I had missed, but my night had had its share of adventure as well. Scott, he was talking about writing some book about rum runners, eggs, a fellow named Gatsby, and who knows what else. It couldn’t be as bad as that play he wrote about the vegetables, but the man did have some brilliant inspiration on occasion, even if I suspected that Zelda might’ve been the real brains.

After a couple more gins with the Fitzgerald’s, I hopped in one of them yellow cabs and took it up to Harlem. Coleman Hawkins, Smack Henderson, and Ethel Waters were playing at a joint, the crowd being mostly Black folk, which was a sight livelier than that place around the corner, the Cotton Club, which was white people only. Hawk had saved me a table up front, probably hoping I’d engage in some barneymugging with him after the gig, which was distinctly a possibility, as the man was mighty fine in the sack. The place was lively, the audience up and cutting a rug, and truth be told, some of the sheiks in there could really hoof it, but I was antsy, so I cut out and took another yellow cab down to Coney Island.

In Diamond Tony’s Saloon I found my friends, Arkady and Peter, who were sweet on each other, but they were far from weak sisters. I’d seen them on more than one occasion throw down with some real brunos and walk away victorious. Mae West was up on stage singing and dancing, and I went on the floor with some Italian gent and started shimmying. Before I knew what was happening, I was up on stage next to Mae, shimmying for all I was worth, and the crowd was loving it.

A bit after midnight I decided to move on to another joint in Williamsburg. As the yellow cab rolled through the streets of Brooklyn, I wondered where my life was going. I’d been to college, could play the piano mighty fine, dance like nobody’s business, and loved to read. I enjoyed the occasional baseball game and had even slept with a few ballplayers. But I wasn’t meant to marry and become some housewife, that was for certain.

I had no idea that I was about to go awry, or what the gangster Bugsy Siegel would do for love, what my dapper was capable of, or that I was about to meet the most interesting man I’d ever met, a gumshoe at that, a private dick hired by my dapper to find me. Not that I really wanted to be found or was missing at all, or was I?

Back to this PI. His name is 8 Ballo, but he is really a Big 6, one of the largest men I’ve ever known. He’s Hungarian, went to the Great War, likes to read, drink brown liquor, and would prove quite adept in bed. Although I didn’t necessarily want to be found, and he’d been hired to find me, I kind of wanted to get to know him better.

My name is Velma and I’m about to go awry.

Velma Gone Awry, A Brooklyn 8 Ballo Mystery Book #1
Genre: Private Investigator, Historical
Release: April 2023
Format: Print, Digital
Purchase Link

Award-winning author Matt Cost brings us back to Brooklyn in the Roaring ’20s and introduces us to Hungarian PI, 8 Ballo, who is hired to find the daughter of a wealthy businessman. The search will lead him to cross paths with Dorothy Parker, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Coleman Hawkins, Bugsy Siegel, Babe Ruth, and many more as he tries to uncover why Velma went awry.

8 Ballo’s mother was certain he was going to be born a girl, but when he comes out a boy, she writes down simply the number 8, as he has seven older siblings. She meant to change it to a real name at some point but never got around to it.

Now, in his mid-thirties, 8 is a college educated man, a veteran of the Great War, jilted in love, and has his own private investigator business. He enjoys his friends, a good book, jazz music, and a very simple life. When he is hired to find the young flapper daughter of a German businessman, life suddenly becomes much more complicated.

About the author
Matt Cost was a history major at Trinity College. He owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014 he was released and began writing. And that’s what he does. He writes histories and mysteries. Cost has published four books in the Mainely Mystery series, with the fifth, “Mainely Wicked“, due out in August of 2023. He has also published four books in the Clay Wolfe Trap series, with the fifth, “Pirate Trap“, due out in December of 2023. For historical novels, Cost has published “At Every Hazard” and its sequel, “Love in a Time of Hate“, as well as “I am Cuba“. In April of 2023, Cost will combine his love of histories and mysteries into a historical PI mystery set in 1923 Brooklyn, “Velma Gone Awry“.

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