First Paragraph/Teaser Tuesday: The Body in the Ballroom by R. J. Koreto

Every Tuesday Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posted the first paragraph of a book she is reading or planning to read. In 2018, Vicki from I'd Rather Be at the Beach is taking over this meme.

Here's mine:

St. Louis wasn't half bad. I met some fine people there, but my job being what it was, I met a lot of bad ones, too. The Secret Service said they had found some funny business with money, and as St. Louis was a lively town, it was as good a place as any to plot something like that. Mr. Wilkie, the Secret Service chief, said I could make myself useful in St. Louis, and I suppose I did. Alice wrote me one letter from Washington, filled with backstairs gossip along with complaints about her stepmother and cousin Eleanor. She told me not to write back because it was too hard to hide, and she didn't want to make it difficult to get me back home, but I was in her thoughts, and she hoped to see me again soon. In the small hours, when I was really honest with myself, I admitted I sometimes missed her.

 

Link up here. It is very easy to play along:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers! Everyone loves Teaser Tuesday.

Here's mine:

"I'm sorry you suffered such a discourtesy in my house. Party or not, I'm glad he's dead."

That sent a chill through the room. But then Alice complimented the band, and the conversation turned to safer topics for a while until there was another knock on the door, and a male servant entered the room.

This week I am reading The Body in the Ballroom by R. J. Koreto. This is an historical mystery starring President Teddy Roosevelt's daughter Alice. Here is the description from Amazon:

President Teddy Roosevelt’s daring daughter, Alice, leaps into action to exonerate a friend accused of poisoning a man just about everyone hated.

Alice Roosevelt, the brilliant, danger-loving daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt, has already risked an assassin’s bullet to solve one murder. She never expected to have to sleuth another, but she’d never pass up the opportunity, either. Anything to stave off boredom.

And such an opportunity presents itself when Alice is invited to a lavish ball. The high-society guests are in high spirits as they imbibe the finest wines. But one man, detested by nearly all the partygoers, quaffs a decidedly deadlier cocktail. An African-American mechanic, who also happens to be a good friend of former Rough Rider-turned-Secret Service Agent Joseph St. Clair, is suspected of the murder-by-poison, but Alice is sure he’s innocent and is back on the scene to clear his name.

From downtown betting parlors to uptown mansions, Alice and Agent St. Clair uncover forbidden romances and a financial deal that just might change the world. But neither Alice nor her would-be protector may survive the case at hand in The Body in the Ballroom, R. J. Koreto's gripping second Alice Roosevelt mystery.