The Jazz Files

Overview

It is 1920. Twenty-two year old Poppy Denby moves from Northumberland to live with her paraplegic aunt in London. Aunt Dot, a suffragette, was injured in battles with the police in 1910. Her contacts prove invaluable. Poppy lands a position as an editorial assistant at the Daily Globe. Poppy has always wanted to be a journalist and laps up the atmosphere of the news room. Then one of the paper's hacks dies suddenly and dramatically. His story was going to be the morning lead, but he hasn't finished writing it. Poppy finds his notes and completes the story, which is a sensation. The editor, realising her valuable suffragette contacts, invites her to dig deeper. Poppy starts sifting through the dead man's files and unearths a major mystery which takes her to France - and into danger. By the end of the story Poppy is a fixture on the paper, and is being courted by a photographer. Further mysteries lie ahead.

Author Biography

Fiona Veitch Smith is the author of the Poppy Denby Investigates novels, Golden Age-style murder mysteries set in the 1920s, about a reporter sleuth who works for a London tabloid. The first book in the series, The Jazz Files, was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger, while subsequent books have been shortlisted for the Foreword Review Mystery Novel of the Year and the People's Book Prize. She is formerly a journalist, having worked on the arts and crime beats of a Cape Town newspaper, and lectured in journalism in the UK for over a decade. She is currently the Deputy Editor of the CWA's Red Herrings Magazine.