A Pair of Aces by Marie Benedict, Victoria Christopher Murray Narrator: Barrie Kreinik, Robin Miles
Format: audiobook, eARC
Source: borrowed from library, supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: crime fiction, historical fiction
Pages: 390
Length: 12 hours and 30 minutes
Published by Berkley, Penguin Audio on June 2, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
A gripping novel about two trailblazing women on opposite sides of the law—a prosecutor and a madam—who team up to bring down notorious Mob boss Lucky Luciano in 1930s New York
Eunice Carter, assistant district attorney for the City of New York and Manhattan’s first Black female prosecutor, has her sights set on the one and only Lucky Luciano, head of New York City’s five largest organized crime families. Other prosectors have tried to bring down Lucky, but they’ve all focused on the crime syndicate’s traditional businesses—bootlegging, gambling, loan sharking, and drug dealing—or tax evasion. No one has thought to approach the Mob through its role in prostitution. Until Eunice. But she can’t get Luciano alone.
Polly Adler has worked long and hard to build up her high-class brothel business. Her client list is filled with well-known names, both the famous and the infamous, who all know her booze is top-notch, her music first-rate, her food exquisite, and her girls the best. But Lucky has gone too far, putting her girls in danger, and Polly finally sees the chance to end his reign once and for all.
Together, Eunice and Polly fashion a case utilizing a network of women. Bridging the enormous divide between them and risking their own lives, they assemble evidence bit by bit, under the nose of the man they’re trying to convict. It is this very alliance—of two women from vastly different worlds—that launches the most sensational trial New York City has ever seen.
My Review:
Eunice Hunton Carter and Polly Adler couldn’t have had less in common – or seemingly less reason to find common cause – if they’d tried.
Carter was an attorney, the first black female prosecutor in the State of New York. The woman who helped to bring down one of the country’s most notorious mobsters, Charles ‘Lucky’ Luciano, as part of New York County Special Prosecutor Thomas E. Dewey’s ‘mob’ of Assistant District Attorneys intent on bringing down mob and political corruption in New York in the mid 1930s.
Polly Adler was a Jewish immigrant from a small village in Russia. She arrived in New York at age 13, with no family to support her, became a garment worker, was raped by her boss, and eventually became one of the most celebrated madams in New York City. ‘Polly’s House’, a famous, high-class brothel, was a place where the rich and famous hung out, got drunk, and were able to indulge in the kind of vice that no one talked about in polite company.
At the beginning of this story, they had one thing in common. They both wanted to get Lucky Luciano put behind bars. Both of their motives included a bit of self-serving. Carter wanted to prove her worth, to get a feather in her cap, and as the only woman and the only person of color on Dewey’s team, she needed to work twice as hard to get half the recognition of the men on the team and she knew it. Adler wanted Luciano out of her business. Her business may have been illegal, but it was hers, and she did the best she could by her ‘girls’ and her employees. A best that was surprisingly good until Luciano and his criminal ‘Combination’ began their racket of coercing all the prostitutes and madams into a single organization that ran them all into early graves.
Carter’s role in Luciano’s trial is well documented. Not nearly as prominent as it should have been, but the documentation is all there to discover and/or uncover, as the authors of this book certainly did.
Polly Adler was celebrated in her day, and wrote her own autobiography in order to tell the truth, or at least a part of it, in regards to her own legacy. Where Carter’s life and especially her contributions to Dewey’s team and Luciano’s case are part of the historical record, Adler’s contribution is less certain and quite possibly entirely speculative. If Adler’s part of the case were true, it’s a secret the two women would have both needed to take to their graves. And maybe they did.
But whether Adler’s half of this story is true or merely fiction, taken together Carter’s truth and Adler’s innuendo combine to tell a compelling story of two women, each at the top of their entirely opposite games, who may have stood together in the shadows to bring justice and an end to a vast and sweeping criminal enterprise.
Because of Carter’s – and possibly both women’s – work, while Thomas Dewey may not have been able to later defeat Harry Truman for the presidency, (yes, this is THAT Dewey), but he was able to defeat Lucky Luciano for the heart and soul of New York.
Escape Rating A: I was surprised by how much I enjoyed this one, no matter how much my brain kept sticking on whether or not Polly’s part of the story was true. It was plausible and that was enough to quiet my willing suspension of disbelief and allow me to settle into the story.
Which was certainly aided and abetted by the quality of the audiobook narration. Barrie Kreinik, whose narration was absolutely the best thing about an otherwise lackluster book, The Sirens, did a terrific job as Polly Adler, while Robin Miles was every single bit as good at portraying Eunice Carter. Together, they did a fantastic job of showing the differences between the two characters, between Polly slight accent, her pragmatic turns of phrase and usage of underworld cant vs Eunice precise, educated and cultured diction.
The two women came from very different worlds, and it showed in every world they uttered as well as exactly how they uttered it. Something that their narrators handled with aplomb.
Back to the story, which is told from their alternating first-person perspectives. They have the same goal, but not for the same motives. They don’t trust each other. They don’t even like each other. They don’t become intimate friends – they can’t even be seen together. Not just because they’re on opposite sides of the case, but because they’ll both be lynched – even in New York City – if a white woman – even a notorious madam like Polly Adler, and a black woman are seen to be actually socializing.
The conversation they eventually have about which one of them had more to contend with in their lives is eye-opening because of how truthful and REAL it is even if it never happened.
The story doesn’t shy away from the difficulties they each face. Not just Carter’s constant fight for the opportunities and the respect she should be due, as well as her ongoing conflict with a husband who can’t understand why being a wife and mother will never be enough for her. But also the notoriety and constant threat of prosecution that Adler faces for surviving in the only way that was ever open to her. As one of her girls says early on, “no little girl dreams of growing up to be a whore”. But it’s often the choice left in a life of circumstances beyond their control.
What keeps the reader turning pages and/or listening with bated breath, is the way that the case proceeds like a tennis match, bouncing from Carter’s perspective to Adler’s, with tribulations and desperations on both sides even if they’re not the same troubles besetting each woman.
At the same time, the story does an excellent job of bringing its time and place, New York City and especially Harlem in the 1930s to vibrant life. We’re with these women in their triumph, even though they couldn’t openly share that triumph with each other.
In the end, I enjoyed this a lot and got surprisingly caught up in it even though the broad outlines of the story are already known. I liked the way the story was presented with its contrasting viewpoints and it was very engaging, to the point where I just bought copies of both of the authors’ previous collaborations, The Personal Librarian and The First Ladies, in both ebook and audio, for future listening pleasure.
Enter the Nightmare (Harmony, #18) by 
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Escape Rating A-: I’m here for the dust bunnies. No, seriously, I mean it. The 
They bond because they’re stuck in whatever-it-is together, whether by choice or chance or in this case, a bit of both. And the only way out is through. Through the case at least, although they eventually figure out that they’ll never be through with each other. And that dust bunny Sebastian will be bringing all of his many, many dust bunny friends over for pizza for the rest of ALL of their lives.
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Escape Rating B: I have mixed feelings about this one. So many mixed feelings. But before I get into my mixed feelings about the story, I have to say that I have none whatsoever about the audio version I listened to. Narrator Joan Walker did an excellent job making the many voices of the large cast of characters sound distinct and distinctly recognizable from each other. She also made an especially good Carol Quinn, who was realistic, pragmatic, wry, self-deprecating and self-aware of exactly who she was and how she got herself into the fix she is currently in.
But the official investigation in this one was exceedingly slapdash, even by the looser standards of a cozy. The police didn’t even nod in the direction of checking motives, following the money, documenting the crime scene, or much of anything else. I started thinking about the corruption angle, and it wasn’t that either. Well it was, but on a much smaller scale and in a very different way than I was thinking. And might have made a bit more sense – or made a much bigger story. (C’est la reading vie.)
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Except possibly the murderer, as the smoking log that used to be his friend Marcus Toole isn’t the first of Bayard’s friends to die in mysterious – and possibly sacrificial – circumstances. Bayard fears for his own life – and so he should. Because it’s starting to look to Devlin as if Bayard’s chickens have finally come home to roost – and that some of those chickens have turned out to be hawks.
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This entry in the series is particularly fascinating because it doesn’t shy away from either the way that privilege enables terrible villainy, the way that war brings out the worst in those who are already villainous, and the way that privilege warps even the most upright of people. At the same time, the series as a whole dives deeply into the motives of the powers-that-be on a broader level, shows just how the sausage of government and politics and the press are made and reinforce each other, and how defense of the status quo operates in service of protecting its own privileges first – no matter that defense is dressed up in patriotism and stability.
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But Bea Harper is missing, and so is Deke Wells, her romantic partner/frenemy – it’s complicated. Bea’s niece Sophy and Deke’s nephew Luke were surprised by the discovery of that relationship because the Harpers and the Wells have been feuding since the previous century.
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I loved that Bea and Deke found THEIR HEA even though we don’t see their romance. The amount of time they’ve been (secretly) involved also helps to balance out the instalove between their respective niblings, Sophy and Luke, which happens so fast and furiously hot that even the participants acknowledge it’s awfully fast although they are both deeply committed by the end of this FOUR DAY adrenaline race.