Release Date: November 19, 2024
Size: 7 x 10, 60 pages
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-57869-180-7
Library of Congress Control Number: 2024944331
Booksellers and Libraries: Order Info Here or at Ingram.

SYNOPSIS

Detective Levy is at it again in episode three, where the past meets up with the present and something unforeseen becomes the center of his life.

In this issue, Bettina Eldersveld arrives in Halifax by steamer from Holland during WWII. She’s obligated to marry the man who had paid her passage, but when she meets her sponsor face-to-face, she boldly says, “I refuse to be a war bride!” Decades later, she hires Detective Levy and his fiancée, the photographer Alexa Sands, to track down Bettina’s long-lost daughter, whom she raised as a single mother in a house full of other wayward war brides. While ruminating on WWII history, Levy and Sands realize the sheer passage of time deeply affects their own romantic courtship. Will they solve the case and still have time to marry? Find out in this stand-alone graphic noir story of war, absence, redemption, and love.

With special guest appearances by (the fictionalized) Senator Leahy, the ghost of Veronica Lake, opera singer Erik Kroncke, film historian Rick Winston, and Robert the bakery poet!

Praise

"With I Refused to Be a War Bride, their third collaboration in the Detective Levy series, Annie Bakst and Howard Norman have struck gold. Gorgeous art and elegant writing, both in service to an historical fable that also contains a non-bridal party to end all bridal parties and a bakery that might be enchanted. All this, and a Veronica Lake cameo too: I loved it."

—George Spaulding, circulation/ILL librarian and mystery club facilitator at Kellogg-Hubbard Library

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“There’s a soft, gentle, and playful tone to the work that will appeal to readers looking for a nontraditional detective story. Bakst’s painterly grayscale artwork is likewise low-key, with smudged edges that give most pages an expressionistic look…A light, breezy mystery that will leave readers looking forward to the next episode.”

—Kirkus Reviews

REVIEWS & IN THE NEWS

Burlington Free Press, December 3, 2024: Dash through the snow to get books by Vermonters and about Vermont this holiday season

Kirkus Reviews, November 13, 2024: I REFUSED TO BE A WAR BRIDE, DETECTIVE LEVY DETECTS: EPISODE 3