I won Brooklyn on Fire in a giveaway from The Reading Room site, which is now bookstr. Brooklyn on Fire by Lawrence H. Levy is the second installment of the Mary Handley Mysteries. Lawrence has a wonderful way of fusing historical events and people with imagination. This is a superbly written mystery that kept me intrigued.

I ended up dnf'ing the first book in this series because it was incredibly boring but I won this second book, Brooklyn on Fire, before I started the first so I was hoping it would be better since Second Street Station was Levy's debut. Well unfortunately I didn't care for this one anymore then I did the first. It again was boring and the writing and story just didn't flow well to me in either book. I also felt absolutely nothing for any of the characters so I'm calling it a wrap and moving on to something else. It may be that this series just isn't for me so if you read it, I hope you enjoy it more then I did.

*I received this ARC from Goodreads FirstReads in exchange for an honest review. Thank you!

#BROOKLYNONFIRE  4 STARS!  AVAILABLE NOW  #LAWRENCEHLEVY  @CrownPublishing This was my first book by this author and I really liked it a lot. The main character was just so down to earth and so likable. I could hang out with Mary all day. She was my kind of girl. I really liked the historical part of it and the hanging out with the Carnegie's, the Vanderbilt's, and the Rockefeller's.

The best part was the fact that the woman solved the murders that the police department could not. (Yay, go females!!)

This was quite the cozy little mystery with a little history, (some fact and some fiction), a little romance, (nothing more daring than a kiss or hand holding), some corruption, some murder, some enemies who became friends and a woman who saves the day. What more could you ask for in a book? I loved it and could not put it down. There was someone out to get Mary and/or her family and I had to know who it was. It had to be the biggest scoundrel of all, because Mary's family was the nicest family there was, well if you didn't count the mother. HA!

I sincerely recommend this book. It will keep you interested and wondering who the puppet is that is pulling the strings and sad for Mary's love life but happy she found the killer and the scoundrels. It is definitely an entertaining read.

Thanks to Blogging for Books/Crown Publishing for approving my request to read this and to Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest review. Totally entertaining and I miss Mary already.

Mary Handley truly was the first female detective for the Brooklyn Police Department in 1890.  They’d hired her to sleuth a high-profile murder which was that of Charles Goodrich.  The author used this historical murder case to launch his first book in the series, Second Street Station.  Lawrence Levy skillfully combines history with fiction in order to create a unique character in Mary Handley.  In Brooklyn on Fire, Mary is contacted by Emily Worsham who believes that her Uncle John Worsham’s death in 1870 had actually been murder.  Historically, you begin your investigation into a cold case as you do now – you exhume the body.  Mary contacts John’s widow, Arabella Huntington, for permission.  Arabella was irate to even be asked such a thing, but John’s son, Archer, felt the need to know the truth and so Arabella conceded.

With added twists to the tale, there is a lot more going on as additional murders accumulate.  Mary’s brother, Sean Handley, on the Brooklyn police force, is found to be suspect.  The plot and characters are very original.  However, so many characters were introduced at the beginning of the novel, that I felt deluged by them all.  Other than Mary, the author also featured several other actual historical figures such as Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, and the Vanderbilt family, once again combining fact with fiction.  In an interview, Levy mentions that he matched Mary’s personality to that of the woman he would have loved her to be since he clearly doesn’t know her actual personality.  You can find that interview here.  Rating: 3 out of 5.