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In Dollface (New American Library), set in 1920s Chicago, writer Renee Rosen cuts right to the chase in the first pages. Vera, the titular Dollface, is at a Prohibition-era speakeasy, acting bold, taking risks, and seeing how much she can get away with. She’s there with her childhood friend and roommate, out for fun and adventure. Vera’s tiny, but she’s a looker who can hold her liquor. She attracts the attention of men. The club is suddenly raided, and in the ensuing commotion one of these men leads her to safety through a secret passage. He disappears. But not for long. Just as she’d dreamed, Vera’s life is about to get very interesting.
Vera soon finds herself dating rival gangsters: Tony Liolli on the south side (associated with Al Capone) and Shep Green on the north side (associated with Dion O’Banion). It’s not giving too much away to note that there’s blood and guts involved in their lines of work too. Vera ends up marrying Shep and living in high style (partying with Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin, for instance) but she continues to see Tony, and as tensions—and murders— between the gangs escalate, Dollface is caught in the middle in more ways than one. (“I got glitz and glamour, all right, but I also got gore and carnage.”)
