A Front Page Affair

Set in 1915 New York, A Front Page Affair takes the reader from a murder in the stables of the swank Sleepy Hollows Country Club to an international intrigue that threatens America’s carefully preserved neutrality. The heroine of the piece is Capability Weeks, a plucky female making her way in the male world of journalism. The chronologically linear plot advances slowly for the first two-thirds of the novel, with Capability being sent to interview witnesses for her newspaper and the police busily following false leads. The pace picks up in the final third when the real intrigue involving German spies and a diabolical scheme to undermine the British war effort takes center stage but, even here, the moments of excitement are given short shrift, neither properly promoted nor fully milked, with too much attention being devoted to contextual background and details of everyday life. The writing, while clear and grammatically correct throughout, lacks the passion and originality to fully exploit the denouement’s potential to grip the reader, and, in consequence, this tale remains squarely in the category of light, moderately entertaining reads.