Mysterious Press / Penzler
Published August 4, 2026
Reviewed by Mary-Jane Oltarzewski
The intrepid reporter, a trope familiar to most fans of crime fiction, is having as much trouble getting work these days as her real-life counterparts: with the diminishment of print media, there are fewer and fewer outlets in which reporters can hone and display their skills, both in fiction and the real world. Fortunately for readers and writers alike, these characters survive and thrive in solid historical fiction like Liars in Paradise, the second of Olesya Lyuzna’s darkly glamorous Jazz Age novels to feature Ginny Dugan, the advice- columnist-turned-crime-reporter-turned-private detective. Ginny’s passionate heart and relentless curiosity have a way of leading her into the smoky speakeasies, kinky dance clubs, and glittering mansions in and around Prohibition-era New York City.
As the story begins, Ginny and Jack, her partner at the Shadow Investigations Agency, are at an underground gambling joint, looking for dirt on a mechanic by day, playboy by night, who appears to be stepping out with an elegant woman, most certainly not his wife. A pretty routine inquiry, until Ginny stumbles into the middle of a knife fight out back, and takes a nasty punch in the jaw. Jack arrives in time to prevent any further injury, but their cover is blown; a couple of the goons who supply “security” for the club recognize him as “Black Jack” Crawford, a reformed card shark who used to work for the owner of the club, a ruthless gangster named Dickie Stryker. Jack still bears the physical and emotional scars that hint at a troubled past, and Ginny is aware of this. In fact, his shady background has occasionally “been a benefit to their investigations, but sometimes she wonders if each memory etches a fresh wound into his skin.” The pair brush themselves off and call it a night, and Ginny heads home, only a little worse for wear. She barely has time to pour herself a shot of illicit gin, however, when the phone rings, and an unfamiliar voice tells her “There’s been a shooting, and we caught Jack with the gun.”
She returns to the club, now the scene of a bloody massacre: nine people are dead, and a valuable statue belonging to Dickie Stryker has been stolen. The only surviving witness, has vanished, and Dickie is all too willing to pin the blame on his former employee, who knew all the entrances and exits, and was found “holding the gun, surrounded by dead bodies.” Ginny desperately offers to find the missing witness and help recover the missing statue, in exchange for Jack’s life. Stryker agrees, giving them five days to “return with the guilty party and my beloved statue” before exacting his lethal punishment.
All of this in the first 30 pages. This dame Lyuzna sure knows how to get a party started, and the pace only picks up from here. Over the next five days, the investigation leads the detectives into the midst of a dangerous, cultish self-help group, led by a mysterious figure whose powerful appeal might arise from his charismatic intelligence, or possibly his ability to collect information from his acolytes, in order to blackmail them. Complicating matters, the search entangles Ginny and Jack with figures from their respective pasts. Ginny is drawn to a sexy lesbian taxi dancer who was the last person to see the missing witness, and all these women are connected to the dazzling Gloria Gardner: a sinuous star of the Ziegfeld Follies “with a pitch-perfect sense of drama,” who changed Ginny’s life, broke her heart, and then disappeared. Jack tracks the cult to the Gold Coast of Long Island – Gatsby country – where they have taken over a grand mansion that was inherited by his first true love. All of these figures have reasons to interfere with the deep, increasingly complex feelings that the two detectives have for one another; everyone claims to be the only one who can be of any help, while simultaneously assuring each partner, that the other “is not who you think they are.”
As in much of the best noir fiction, the question of who stole the statue and shot up the speakeasy turns out to be secondary to much bigger questions of trust, corruption, and the mysteries of the human heart. By the end, Ginny has answered a number of these questions and been burdened with as many more. Her heart is wounded and her soul is wary, but her intrepid curiosity burns as bright as ever; she assures herself, and her readers, that “she sure as hell isn’t done yet.”
For those of us who like a good story and an intriguing protagonist, let’s hope not.