Here in Casino City, coverage of Las Vegas tends to focus on the gaming industry because it’s like our wheelhouse. And what’s not strictly game-related is generally still geared towards tourists.
But there’s so much more to Las Vegas than casinos. And what we find in Megan Edwards” debut novel, Off Frank Sinatra, is a cozy mystery about an aspiring journalist who discovers the body of a famous Las Vegas philanthropist, gets caught up in subsequent investigations, and, to be fair, inserts himself.
“Las Vegas is full of so many unusual things,” Edwards told Casino City. “It’s just different from other cities.” 스포츠토토
Copper Black is a 24-year-old who was recently transplanted off the East Coast and works as a calendar editor for a local newspaper, living in a one-room apartment above her brother’s garage when a lot of things happen at once. First, her boyfriend breaks up with him when he discovers that he is pregnant with his soon-to-be ex-wife. Second, she performs housekeeping at the glamorous Las Vegas landmark that the mob built in the ’70s for his girlfriend. Third, she begins to work on an article about a famous local private high school founded by an adorable, wealthy socialite named Marilyn Weaver to get her column. Guri and Marilyn get along very well until Marilyn is killed and Guri finds her body.
This is obviously a bit of a shock to Copper, but it also makes the young reporter’s inner fantasy of becoming Nellie Page an excessive impulse. There are a few complicated issues, however. One is that there is already a very serious and suspicious man, Detective Booth, whose real work is to solve the murder, who is immediately and easily placed on the wrong side for avoidable reasons. The other is that Copper is still doing his job. In addition, another ex-boyfriend of Copper is visiting, and Marilyn’s charming, possibly eerie, niece is harassing him. And Copper’s brother, a bride, is in an unnecessarily nasty situation, which happens between the Coalition for the Homeless and out-of-state Native American groups when bones are found at the construction site of a new homeless shelter. In short, Copper suddenly finds himself very, very busy.
These diverse plotlines play a role in Kopper running around Vegas in her uniquely non-sexy used minivan, such as “How to Feed Desert Turtles,” “Why Black Outdoor Swimming Pool Was Popular in the ’70s,” and “How Long Will It Take to Dispose of Bodies Through Meat Plants?” to meet new people and learn new things.
“It’s not a particularly heavy crime story,” Megan Edwards told Casino City. “I wanted to brighten it up and have characteristics about Las Vegas that I’ve come to know and love, like a desert tortoise. I have a soft spot for them.”
Copper’s journey through Las Vegas as an amateur detective was inspired in part by the author’s own adventures as he got to know the city as a new destination. The story begins in 1993 when he lost his husband and home in a wildfire in Pasadena, California.
“My husband had just moved his whole business home, so it was a complete clean-up,” Edwards said. “We needed everything we had, except for a dog and a car. So I quickly came to the conclusion that we might have to do something different. Of course, one way was to rebuild into a new house, but I thought, ‘You know, we don’t have anything, so there are some opportunities we wouldn’t have otherwise.'”
The couple bought an RV and decided to travel for six months before deciding what to do next. Six and a half years later, they were still traveling around North America, intending to stay just a few weeks, just like Edwards did some research for the novel she was working on. The research was never really done; at least three books are at some stage in its outcome; and Edwards is still in Las Vegas.
