The Jazz Club Spy

Dear Readers,

I am delighted to share The Jazz Club Spy, my fourth book and perhaps the most fun to research and write. Here is a brief synopsis: 

New York City, 1938: At the height of the Great Depression, when President Roosevelt is fighting to keep America out of WWII, Giddy Brodsky knows she’s lucky to have a job as a cigarette girl at a Manhattan jazz club. Nevertheless, Giddy dreams of being ‘a somebody’, an independent business woman, and opening her own store selling cosmetics. She yearns to lift her family out of the poverty-stricken Lower East Side and leave her grim tenement behind.

Giddy and her family have lived in New York since they fled their Russian shtetl after a deadly pogrom in 1918. Even after twenty years in the United States her memories of that night continue to haunt her.

Yet, Giddy is still focused on the future…until one night on her way home from work she recognizes one of the Cossacks who participated in the pogrom that changed her life forever.

Determined to get answers, —and vengeance—she enlists the help of Carter van der Zalm, the Chief Commissioner of Immigration at Ellis Island, who is hunting the same man. He suspects the Russian Cossack is involved in an assassination plot that will destroy American and Soviet relations. Soon Giddy is moonlighting as an informant for Carter. But when she finally tracks down the man they’re both seeking, she comes across a shocking discovery that changes everything she once held true.

The Jazz Club Spy is a gritty look at immigrant life in pre-war America, and the personal battle one woman wages between justice and forgiveness.

May you enjoy it.

 ~ Roberta Rich

EARLY REVIEWS

Canadian Living magazine: The Jazz Club Spy is a book club pick (PULSE-POUNDING NOVELS THAT SAY SOMEONE’S ALWAYS WATCHING…) in their Holiday 2023 issue.

Your Bookish Life: Most Anticipated Books November 2023. Link here.

The Suburban (Quebec newspaper): Book event announcement. Link here.

Metroland Media: The Jazz Club Spy was included in their roundup. This roundup + review was syndicated across 25 Metroland newspaper sites. Link here.

CBC Books: Fall 2023 roundup. Link here.