Murder - The Flapper, Her Sugar Daddy and the Tabloid Journalist Who Tries to Uncover the Truth

Broadway Butterfly is a novel based on a true crime story. The book reads like a thriller, which might not come as a surprise if you are familiar with the author (I was not when I started this book.)

Sara DiVello is the creator and host of a series of video interviews with the authors of mysteries and thrillers. At this point she has over 400 interviews to her credit, and you can see those in various venues including YouTube.

In the book DiVello explores the real-life murder of the so-called "Broadway Butterfly" Dot King, a 28-year-old Jazz Age flapper who was found murdered in her bed by her maid in March of 1923. Dot King (her stage name - her parents named her Anna Keenan) was found with an oversized bottle of chloroform beside her and a fortune in jewels and furs missing.

King had a rich sugar daddy who showered her with gifts and had a predilection for pretty toes, an ex-lover who was an underworld kingpin and "owned" Atlantic City (Nucky Johnson, the real-life basis for the character in HBO's Boardwalk Empire), and a gigolo boyfriend who liked to beat women. All potential suspects, but not enough proof was ever uncovered against any of them to lead to a conviction.

Much of the story follows the work of reporter Julia Harpman of the tabloid New York Daily News. Harpman is dogged in trying to uncover the killer, but her tenacity only leads to trouble for herself.

The murder of Dot King had tentacles that reached all the way to the White House. Draper Daugherty, son of then Attorney General Harry Daugherty steps forward after King's death to reveal that he was a friend of the party girl and was being blackmailed for it. He offers to tell authorities everything he knows about Dot King. He then goes missing. His father, the Attorney General, is running the campaign for Warren Harding's re-election and most certainly didn't need the distraction of having his son in the middle of a murder case. Only later was it revealed that Draper was committed to an institution by his family, conveniently pulling him out of the limelight.

Also, J. Kearsley Michell, King's rich sugar daddy, was a top donor to the Harding campaign, and had a secret meeting in Washington DC with one of the Attorney General's top assistants, after which the case against him for the Dot King murder suspiciously went cold.

The corruption of the Harding White House is ably covered Crooked in the book I mentioned above. The Harding administration was one of, if not the most, corrupt US Presidential administrations of the 20th century. Many of the scandals of that administration could be traced to the doorstep of Attorney General Harry Daugherty. It's perhaps not a surprise that this case, the murder of a 1920s party girl with characters so close to the corruption, should go unsolved to this day.

RATING: Three Stars ⭐⭐⭐

RATING COMMENTS: DiVello's novel is fast paced and entertaining, but the "novelization" of true events always leaves me with questions. I believe the key facts in this book are objectively true, but how much of the thoughts and dialogue attributed to the real-life characters are true or add to understanding of the case is open to interpretation.

NOTE: The author has several photos of the main characters in the real life Broadway Butterfly case available on her web site. You can find them here.

WHERE I GOT MY COPY: I downloaded the ebook from Amazon and read it on my Kindle Paperwhite.