The Last Note of Warning: A Mystery

The Last Note of Warning is the third in the luscious, mysterious, and queer Nightingale mystery series by Katharine Schellman, set in 1920s New York.

Prohibition is a dangerous time to be a working-class woman in New York City.

By day, Vivian Kelly is a respectable shop assistant, delivering luxurious dresses to the city’s wealthy and elite. At night, she joins the madcap revelry of New York’s underworld, serving illegal drinks and dancing into the morning at a secretive, back-alley speakeasy known as the Nightingale. She’s found, if not love, then something like it with her bootlegger sweetheart, Leo, even if she can’t quite forget the allure of the Nightingale’s sultry owner, Honor Huxley.

Then the husband of a wealthy client is discovered dead in his study, and Vivian was the last known person to see him alive. The police and the press are both eager to name a culprit, and Vivian finds herself the primary suspect.

She can’t flee town without endangering the people she loves, but Vivian isn’t the sort of girl to go down without a fight. She’ll cash in every favor she has from her motley crew of friends to prove she had no connection to the dead man.

The police are closing in on Vivian, and the more she digs into the victim’s life, the harder it is to avoid the truth: someone she knows wanted him dead. And the best way to get away with murder is to set up a girl like Vivian to take the fall.

KATHARINE SCHELLMAN (she/her) is a former actor, one-time political consultant, and current writer. Her debut novel, The Body in the Garden, was a Suspense Magazine Best Book of 2020 and led to her being named one of BookPage’s 16 Women to Watch. A graduate of the College of William & Mary, Katharine currently lives and writes in the mountains of Virginia in the company of her husband, children, and the many houseplants she keeps accidentally murdering.