17/06/2026
A Deadly Game by Laraine Stephens
Chapter One
New Year’s Eve, 1924
It was to be Miss Kitty’s last outing for some time, given that it was no longer safe for her to be out in public. She had handed in her resignation, said her farewells, and accepted that going into isolation was the only alternative. But, before she withdrew, she had wanted one last evening, one last chance to let loose and enjoy herself.
The party was being held in a gambling den near the Fitzroy Town Hall, in an area called ‘The Narrows,’ an assortment of claustrophobic lanes, tired warehouses, cobbled streets, and dingy houses. She was a frequent visitor to that establishment and knew what to expect. All the usual suspects were there, drinking illegal booze, snorting co***ne, gambling, and dancing to a four-piece Dixieland jazz band, watched over by none other than Joseph Theodore Leslie Taylor, alias ‘Squizzy,’ owner of the establishment.
Miss Kitty enjoyed the atmosphere of Melbourne’s underworld, with its smoke-filled rooms, doll-faced girls, and gamblers who played the tables, placed bets on the horses, or watched the shiny pennies spin upwards in a two-up game, betting on the fall of the coins, heads or tails. The clientele of The Narrows was endlessly fascinating to her: petty thieves, gamblers, drug dealers, Squizzy’s cronies. Here people lived on the edge, flouting the law, indulging their whims, and surrendering to their addictions. But it was time to take a break from that world and go to ground, because life had become precarious, ever since her fiancé cm protector had died after a knife was plunged into his back.
Miss Kitty knew that she was a contradiction. She was like the penny in a two-up game: heads on one side and tails on the other.
https://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Game-Reggie-Costa-Mystery-ebook/dp/B0C5NYK5N8
