[IBF]≡ PDF Free Love Olivia Brown Annette Meyers 9780446609210 Books

Free Love Olivia Brown Annette Meyers 9780446609210 Books

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Free Love Olivia Brown Annette Meyers 9780446609210 Books

This book is exactly what I was looking for: 1920s, bohemians, and mystery. I love Olivia/Oliver Brown, she is a wonderful narrator and protagonist. Mrs. Meyers paints such a vivid picture of 1920s New York, I felt as if I were sitting right in the Working Girls Home with Olivia and her friends. Olivia feels like an authentic "modern woman" of the 1920s, she is forward thinking and independent, even earning her own living through her writing. Honestly, this book got me excited about reading again, it was nearly impossible to put it down. Mrs. Meyers knows how to draw her reader in and make them feel like a part of Olivia's world. I have read both this and Murder Me Now, the other Olivia Brown mystery and my only disappointment was that there have not been any more Olivia Brown mysteries written since.


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Free Love Olivia Brown Annette Meyers 9780446609210 Books Reviews

World War I has just ended. The men who are coming home have come, Prohibition is in place. Women have the Vote, bob their hair and are trying all of the new freedoms open to them including the right to pursue casual sexual liasons.
Olivia's fiancee died in the War, her remaining family killed by the influenza, finds herself the possessor of a house in Greenwich Village that had belonged to her Great Aunt Vangie. There she resides with her maid Mattie and her downstairs tenant, Harry Melville, a private investigator. She writes poetry successfully, drinks and smokes to excess and enjoys men with an almost frenzied heedlessness.
But one day while on the way to meet with some of her other friends she discovers a body lying in pool of water in the street. In the days that follow she receives threatening messages, Harry is beaten up in an alley and, as she tries to discover what is happening, a trail of deaths follow her.
There's one annoying moment when Olivia has a lapse of intelligence, other than that, the book does a good job of creating a believable picture of Jazz Age Greenwich village, from it's Irish gangsters to the Provincetown Players.
While I enjoyed this Annette Meyers murder mystery enough to keep reading, I tired of the cigarette smoke and gin and sexual dissipation. I don't think I am really old-fashioned, but I found Olivia Brown to be young and shallow.
Her bohemian life in the environs of Greenwich Village circa 1920 is intriguing enough for a relaxing read, however. And, I, too, was not sure I had the culprit clearly named until pretty close to the end. Actually, the obsession of the men around Olivia (Oliver to her cronies) is believable, if one realizes that they are all gin-soaked and willing to participate in any free love (sex) made so readily available.
The strong friendship between Olivia and her caretaker Mattie is touching. Once again we see the faithful servant class guarding and protecting their upper class employer. Lucky Olivia to have inherited this brownstone from her rebellious great aunt Vangie, to have inherited Mattie's help, and to have inherited in perpetuity, a private eye tenant, Harry Melville.
Olivia's interjected poems reflect the supposed burning genius of an artist whose decadent life fuels her gift. Some of those "inspirations" fell cold on me. Olivia's theatrical experience, particularly in O'Neill's off-Broadway introduction of The Emperor Jones, was quite sensual and led me to believe that it would not have taken much for Olivia to have shared a bi-sexual liason with the women in her group.
I am sure I will try the next Olivia Brown novel when Meyers publishes it. In the meantime I will try her Smith and Wetzon and her co-written Dutchman series. Having seen Meyers and her spouse Marty on CBS Sunday Morning as a featured couple, I want to read what they have written, just for kicks.
Poet Olivia Brown's new life in her recently inherited brown stone house in Greenwich Village is shattered when she trips over a dead body whose face strongly resembles her own. When threats to her own life keep popping up, she joins forces with her lower level tenet, hard living private detective Harry Melville, to seek an end to this mounting terror. Who is the culprit, and why is he after her?

Olivia thrives in Greenwich Village which had become home to a fascinating mix of free spirits, eccentrics, writers, jazz musicians and social activists. Most are young, few with any money. Meyers has credibly created the Village atmosphere where intellectual life encouraged late night discussions in "tea" and "coffee" houses, along with excessive smoking and drinking in spite of Prohibition, and often done in defiance of it. The book's title reflects this time of freedom when women chose lovers and abandoned them at will in great contrast to the mores of the Victorian age!

Period personalities appear in the plot such as Steven Lowell, the Providence Players, and the Hudson Dusters, the notorious Irish street gang whose members end up protecting Olivia more than once. Since Meyers' character is loosely based on the poet Edna Vincent Millay, poetry related to the plot is interspersed throughout the book - a nice touch.

Meyers includes comments about the history behind the story. This is the first of her Olivia Brown series. They are nice companion books to the 1920s San Francisco Fremont Jones series by Dianne Day.
This book is exactly what I was looking for 1920s, bohemians, and mystery. I love Olivia/Oliver Brown, she is a wonderful narrator and protagonist. Mrs. Meyers paints such a vivid picture of 1920s New York, I felt as if I were sitting right in the Working Girls Home with Olivia and her friends. Olivia feels like an authentic "modern woman" of the 1920s, she is forward thinking and independent, even earning her own living through her writing. Honestly, this book got me excited about reading again, it was nearly impossible to put it down. Mrs. Meyers knows how to draw her reader in and make them feel like a part of Olivia's world. I have read both this and Murder Me Now, the other Olivia Brown mystery and my only disappointment was that there have not been any more Olivia Brown mysteries written since.