Death in a Time of Spanish Flu — Frances McNamara

Set in 1918 Chicago, McNamara's excellent ninth Emily Cabot mystery (after 2020's Death on the Home Front) finds Emily's physician husband, Stephen, serving on the front lines of the Spanish Influenza epidemic. Meanwhile, Emily gets drawn into a murder investigation involving Flora Murphy, a notorious gambling king's second wife, who's accused of shooting her younger lover. When Emily discovers that two of her children—Jack, a physician who served in France, and Lizzie, an aspiring sculptor—were friends of the victim, Emily must follow them into the notorious Bohemian circle of the Dil Pickle Club, where revolutionaries, mobsters, and intellectuals such as Carl Sandburg, Vachel Lindsay, and Sherwood Anderson once congregated to read poetry and discuss politics. The shooting death of a man at the club raises the stakes. The real-life characters mingle seamlessly with the fictional ones to capture the myriad contradictions of Chicago, from the dirty politicians and gangsters who run the city to the idealists, intellectuals, and revolutionaries who are committed to social change. This timely novel informs as much as it entertains. (PW starred review)