{"id":10335,"date":"2023-03-15T07:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-03-15T11:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10335"},"modified":"2023-03-14T18:27:21","modified_gmt":"2023-03-14T22:27:21","slug":"the-greenleaf-murders","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=10335","title":{"rendered":"The Greenleaf Murders"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The sense of place is so strong in some crime novels that their setting\u2014London, Paris, St. Mary Meade\u2014practically becomes one of the characters. You get a good example of that in RJ Koreto\u2019s new mystery, The Greenleaf Murders<\/a><\/em>, in which a Manhattan Gilded Age mansion takes on that role. It\u2019s a non-speaking part, of course, except that the house does seem to speak to the book\u2019s protagonist. She\u2019s a young woman architect planning the top-to-bottom renovation named Wren Fontaine. Not only that, this mansion has secrets to tell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Koreto introduces plausible antagonists drawn from the nature of Wren work. For example, a downmarket property development firm that renovates (on the cheap) historic homes and turns them into Bed-and-Breakfasts. The developer\u2019s representative has her eyes on the Greenleaf property, despite the pall of neglect hanging over the mansion now. The owner, Steven Greenleaf, is cagey about his plans for the building, but he\u2019s firm on the point that the only current resident, his elderly Aunt Agnes and her companion, Mrs. Ryan, will keep their small apartment. Mrs. Ryan, n\u00e9e Murphy, is the last of a long line of Murphys with an intimate\u2014possibly too intimate\u2014connection to the Greenleafs. For generations, the Murphys worked for the family as maids, drivers, kitchen help, and now, companion. It\u2019s a shared history with all the twists and reversals you may expect, starting with the long-dead corpse Wren finds in the attic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The police check it out, but, really, they\u2019re more concerned about twenty-first century crimes, and their interest picks up when the property developer turns up dead, shot by the same gun that killed the attic corpse a century before.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Digging for clues to the killings that will help her understand the house gives Wren the opportunity to interact with some interesting secondary characters. There\u2019s Mrs. Ryan\u2019s son, patient Sergeant Ortiz from the NYPD, and a historic preservation purist who knows more about the details of the house than it seems he should. And, there\u2019s a descendant of one of the original owners–a member of the prominent Vanderwerf family. These characters liven up the story, as Wren herself tends to brood. Mostly, she worries she doesn\u2019t have the people skills needed for her job. Houses, ok, she can relate to them, but people? Luckily for Wren, Heather Vanderwerf has every intention of bringing her out of her shell.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The story moves along steadily, but at a stately pace suitable to the mansion itself, as Wren amasses information and develops her theories. I liked Koreto\u2019s writing style and could envision the house and its influence on the characters, though, at times, the dialog seemed contrived to move the plot forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To me, the house and the story seem to say we don\u2019t really escape the past, and more of it is with us all the time than we recognize or acknowledge. Wren, with her dedication to preserving the past, as reflected in the homes people designed and lived in, understands this better than most.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Order here from Amazon<\/a> (affiliate link).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Know someone who loves rehabbing old houses or Gilded Age New York? They\u2019ll love this!<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The sense of place is so strong in some crime novels that their setting\u2014London, Paris, St. Mary Meade\u2014practically becomes one of the characters. You get a good example of that in RJ Koreto\u2019s new mystery, The Greenleaf Murders, in which … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"An old house can be a treasure-trove of secrets--not all of them things the present-day owners want brought to light. Beautifully imagined! ","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1335,40,126],"tags":[2064,2065],"class_list":["post-10335","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-amateur-detective","category-fiction","category-reading-2","tag-gilded-age","tag-rj-koreto"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-2GH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10335","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10335"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10335\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10337,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10335\/revisions\/10337"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}