Review: The Orchid Hour

The Orchid Hour reeks, but in the best possible way. It reeks with the smell of lasagna in Little Italy, the smell of cheap gin in a 1920s speakeasy, and most importantly and most delicately with the scent of orchids at midnight. It reeks of sleazy dodges, flimsy aliases, and multiple murders.The Orchid Hour masquerades as a murder mystery, and it’s satisfying at that level, but underneath that layer, there’s another that’s a love story, and when all those layers are peeled away, it’s a coming-of-age story.

But our hero isn’t a child, not even a teen-ager. She's an Italian-American widow and mother who’s nearly thirty, in a time (not so long ago) when a woman was supposed to have no desires of her own, but only the family’s. When a girl had no girlhood, and a woman was defined only by her place in the family.
That’s where we find Zia de Luca at the opening of the novel, working at her day job at the library, her hair done up in a bun, wearing sensible shoes, going home to do the books for her father-in-law’s cheese shop and looking after her eight-year-old son.
But the first murder puts paid to that, and the second murder sets Zia on the path of vengeance, a path to New York’s nascent criminal under-world, and a path to self-discovery and self-transformation. To a time which will only last as long as the vagrant scent of the orchid, but a time which will change her life forever.

Told not only through Zia’s eyes, but that of the NYPD officer who tries his best to help her and a gangster who sees murder as a simple career opportunity, this novel encompasses New York, 1923 in all its glory and grime, from City Hall to Little Italy, from Greenwich Village to the Great White Way. Thanks to Bilyeu’s masterful hand, we step out into the wilds of New York with Zia. Maybe we’ll find love. Maybe we’ll find ourselves, by being taken out of ourselves.

This is Nancy Bilyeau’s eighth book, her best by far, and she’d already set a high bar. What are you waiting for? Pick it up now.