Escape Artist

By Ed Ifkovic

"Ferber makes an appealing if unlikely detective...." --Kirkus Reviews of Lone Star

In 1904, Edna Ferber is a 19-year-old girl reporter for the Appleton, Wisconsin, Crescent, an occupation her family considers scandalous for a proper young girl. By chance, she interviews Harry Houdini, in town visiting old friends. When beautiful young Frana Lempke disappears and is soon discovered murdered, the crime baffles the local police; Frana disappeared from a locked room at the high school. Edna asks Houdini for help in solving the murder. But as Edna pursues the story, she senses that she is being followed.

Though she is dedicated to her blind father, Edna's homelife is in disorder. And now the newsroom has become a hostile environment, with a new city editor determined to undermine her....

• Language: English
• Publisher: Poisoned Pen Press
• Release date: Nov 30, 2011
• ISBN: 9781615952830

Ed Ifkovic

Ed Ifkovic taught literature and creative writing at a community college in Connecticut for over three decades. His short stories and essays have appeared in the Village Voice, America, Hartford Monthly, and Journal of Popular Culture. A longtime devotee of mystery novels, he fondly recalls discovering Erle Stanley Gardner’s Perry Mason series in a family bookcase, and his immediate obsession with the whodunit world.

Reviews for Escape Artist

[liscarey · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

It's 1904, and nineteen-year-old Edna Ferber is working as a "girl reporter" for the Appleton Daily Crescent, in the small Wisconsin town of Appleton. She's frustrated by the trivial nature of the stories she gets to report, and indulges her imagination and creativity in making the stories she can report as vivid as possible. While the publisher, aging Civil War veteran Sam Ryan, likes Edna, the new City Room editor, Matthias Boon, does not, and believes that females have no place in the newsroom.

Then Appleton's homegrown international celebrity, Ehrich Weiss, better known as Harry Houdini, comes home for a visit. Through a combination of luck and initiative, Edna scores the interview that Houdini originally didn't intend to give to either local paper. Boon's hostility is ratcheted up even further. Meanwhile, Edna can't escape from the stresses at work by going home, because she's in near-constant constant conflict with her sister Fannie, and her mother Julia is resentful and angry over husband and father Jacob's blindness which has forced Julia to take over running the family store, My Store.

When a beautiful young German-American girl, Frana Lempke, disappears from the high school and is found dead two days later, Edna finds herself drawn into the investigation. She knows the school, she knows Frana and her friends, she knows everyone involved. And of course, she is filled with imagination and curiosity that won't let her let go of it. And the deeper she goes in her investigating, the more the tensions at home and at work increase and threaten to come to a crisis that will force her to make major life decisions--if she doesn't become the next victim.

The characters are all compellingly drawn, not least Edna Ferber herself. Ifkovic set himself a risky task, making his viewpoint character and protagonist a young woman who will herself be the most famous and successful woman novelist of the first half of the 20th century, and he's pulled it off. I believe in Edna, her family, co-workers, and friends, and the little midwestern town they live in. Escape Artist works both as mystery and as historical novel, and is a delight to read.

Highly recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley.

[cbl_tn · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A beautiful Appleton high school student, kept under close family supervision, disappears from the school one afternoon, seemingly vanishing between her classroom and the school's exit. If she was running away, she didn't get very far. Her murdered body was discovered in a secluded spot nearby. Young newspaper columnist Edna Ferber, a recent graduate of the high school, uses her familiarity with the school and its students to solve the case. She receives encouragement and insight from world-famous magician Harry Houdini, who just happens to be visiting his hometown at the time of the murder.I found the characters to be much more interesting than the murder plot. Edna Ferber comes across as determined and strong-willed, and her prickly relationship with her mother and sister adds an interesting domestic dynamic to the story. I especially liked Edna's relationship with her ailing father. Harry Houdini's role in the story seemed awkward, like a TV cameo by a famous personality where the star seems to be repeating memorized lines rather than behaving naturally.I believe there are other mysteries in this series set after Ferber had become a successful writer. I'd like to try one of the other books to see if I like the mature Ferber better than the teenager of this story.This review is based on an electronic galley provided by the publisher through NetGalley.

[soniamarie_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This is a simple historical mystery. A girl goes missing... How did she simply disappear from a crowded and well monitored school? (This is 1910 we are talking about here..) And even worse, how did she end up dead and who did it? Harry Houdini (back in his hometown) helps Edna figure it out. Edna Ferber, the one and only girl reporter in the Wisconsin town is on the case. I love Edna. She's a realistic, yet strong heroine. She bravely troops around town asking questions, being shunned by much of society, and stands up to a very sexist editor. However, she has her issues. Her home life is difficult. It's amazing what happens to a household of women when a man isn't around to "maintain order." Edna's father is not "all there" and Edna and her sister and mother are constantly engaged in verbal warfare. Edna is also very nosy, too nosy sometimes and this pushes people away and she also feels very self conscious about the fact that she is not pretty. Edna is real and charming and witty. However, this novel gets a three from me for one simple reason: TMI. Too Much Information. Only about 25 percent is actual mystery. The rest is description, description, description. The novel tells every character's life story, their history, home life, something funny they did or said. The book even goes so far as to decribe pictures on Edna's wall. Too much. Laugh out loud moment: When Edna is having a discussion with Harry Houdini, famous escape artist, she tells him, "Sir, I get three dollars a week running up the streets of the town." (In response to a remark he made about her reporting.) Harry: "Handcuffs pay better." Edna: "I'll stay with my flowery accounts of afternoon teas with the Ladies Benevolent Society, sir. Less wearing on the wrists." Favorite quote: "Men shouldn't have a monopoly on discussing base or foul human behavior, even though they were responsible for so much of it." I got an egalley from netgalley so these quotes may be different in the printed edition.