The Wharton Plot

August 1, 2023

From two-time Mary Higgins Clark Award--nominated Fredericks, who was inspired by real events, The Wharton Plot reimagines Edith Wharton--ready to ditch her publisher, her marriage, and the United States--trying to figure out who shot novelist David Graham Phillips outside the Princeton Club. Prepub Alert.

Copyright 2023 Library Journal

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 30, 2023
Fredericks (The Lindbergh Nanny) presents a vivid portrait 20th–century book publishing and New York City high society in this fascinating if leisurely paced historical standalone featuring House of Mirth author Edith Wharton as a sleuth. It’s January 1911, and novelist David Graham Phillips has been shot on his way out of the Princeton Club in New York. Wharton met the man once, at the Belmont Hotel, and found him “arrogant, entitled, belittling,” and undeniably handsome. After Phillips’s death, his sister urges Wharton to read his soon-to-be-published novel and perhaps champion it upon release. Wharton agrees, and the more she talks to Phillips’s sister, the more she becomes convinced he was targeted deliberately. Fredericks is in no hurry to identify a culprit, preferring to pepper her narrative with appearances from Wharton’s old friend Henry James, scenes depicting Wharton’s disintegrating relationship with her paramour Morton Fullerton, dazzling glimpses of the social lives of the Vanderbilts, and a phone call to Mary Roberts Rhinehart to ask the mystery writer’s opinions on how to investigate a murder. Each of those elements adds depth and touches of humor to this entertaining mystery. Readers looking for a bit of history with their suspense will be gripped.

Starred review from October 13, 2023

Fredericks's (The Lindbergh Nanny) superb mystery delves into the enigmatic mind of Gilded Age literary doyenne Edith Wharton, as the author of The House of Mirth looks into the murder of a muckraker. In New York City, 1911, Edith is listless. Her writing feels lifeless, her marriage, loveless. She is introduced to a fellow writer, David Graham Phillips, whose soon-to-be-published novel will expose the "truth" of the powerful and powerfully corrupt in society. Taking an instant dislike to his proletarian harangues, she puts him out of her mind--until Phillips is murdered. Phillips's sister asks Edith for help to ensure that the controversial manuscript is published (sharing with her the mysterious death threats her brother received days prior to his demise); soon Edith begins to receive the foreboding warnings herself. Caught up in the mystery of Phillips's murder while navigating her own midlife crisis of love and lost opportunities, Edith's determination to find the killer becomes a near obsession. VERDICT Thanks to a literary plot laced with arch wit and precise put-downs, appearances by Wharton's famous friends (including Henry James and the Vanderbilts), and an eclectic assortment of the upper crust in the waning days of a varnished era, Fredericks hits this one out of the park.--Peggy Kurkowski

Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2023
When Edith Wharton meets her publisher for tea, she is irritated when David Graham Phillips--a fellow author who proves himself to be radical, self-important, and opinionated--briefly joins them. The next day, David is shot to death outside of Manhattan's Princeton Club. David's sister, convinced that the killer wanted to stop his next "explosive" book from being published, ropes Edith into advocating for its publication. Edith agrees (despite finding the prose "positively bad") and soon finds herself determined to suss out the killer's identity. Mystery writer Fredericks' fictional version of the great writer Edith Wharton--donned with luxurious furs, often accompanied by her yapping Pekingese, and an unapologetic member of society's tiresome upper crust--is an endearingly cantankerous narrator, acting less like an amateur sleuth and more like a writer committed to sniffing out a story. Outwardly, Edith seems sardonic, while scenes with her unwell husband and an unreliable lover reveal the complexities of her loveless marriage. Based on the real murder of Phillips, Fredericks' latest will especially appeal to bibliophiles, who will enjoy reading tidbits about the real-life authors who appear.

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January 1, 2024
A Pulitzer Prize-winning author probes the murder of a colleague. Edith Wharton was no admirer of David Graham Phillips. She found the journalist's dress affected and his opinions overzealous. But the day after their one and only meeting, the muckraker is shot to death near Gramercy Park, and the novelist's curiosity is decidedly piqued. She leaves her invalid husband, Teddy, back at the Belmont in care of his valet, and persuades her lover, Morton Fullerton, to accompany her to Phillips' funeral. After the service, Phillips' sister, Carolyn Frevert, seeks out Wharton and invites her back to the apartment she shared with her brother. Wharton continues to be intrigued by her glimpse into a social occasion without an Astor or Vanderbilt in sight. Frevert, on the other hand, has a more sharply focused mission. She wants Wharton to advocate for her brother's novel, Susan Lenox: Her Fall and Rise, convincing his publisher to release it in its current form. Wharton finds Lenox as overheated as its author, but the more she reads, the more sympathetic she grows toward Phillips and his circle. She also becomes more sensitive to the dangers an author faces in standing up to the rich and powerful. As her relationship with Teddy becomes more trying, Wharton starts to think about new ways to look at a world where the intrigues of New York's Four Hundred don't always get top billing. Fredericks' elegantly written narrative gives a lively look at an author way ahead of her time.

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