Synopsis:
The Nightingale Mysteries
Last Dance Before Dawn is the final book in the luscious, mysterious, and queer Nightingale mystery series by Katharine Schellman, set in 1920s New York.
Vivian Kelly has finally created a home and a family at the glamorous speakeasy known as The Nightingale, where no one cares who you are in the daytime. After all, in the underground world of 1920s New York City, everyone has a secret to keep, and they’re on the Nightingale’s dance floor to leave those secrets behind. But sometimes it takes more than a dance to escape your past.
When a stranger from Chicago shows up at The Nightingale looking to settle old scores, Vivian and the Nightingale’s owner, the mysterious and alluring Honor Huxley, send him packing. They soon discover, though, that the stranger was just a warning. Slowly, the people who have made The Nightingale their home realize that someone is following them. Hunting them. And that someone won’t stop until they unravel a mystery that’s been cold for years: a missing girl, a boy out for revenge, and a truck full of cash that disappeared in a job gone horribly wrong.
Vivian just wants to protect the people she loves, and she’s willing to dig into the dirt of the past to make it happen. But some questions are safer left unanswered, and now that Vivian has built a family for herself, she has more to lose than ever before.
Now experience this Edgar Award–nominated historical mystery in paperback!
Praise for Last Dance Before Dawn:
“A lively, sprawling crime story that captures the vibrancy of the Roaring ’20s.”
~ Kirkus Reviews
Read an excerpt:
Manhattan, 1925
Everyone came to the Nightingale looking for something.
They didn’t have much else in common, the folks who snuck down the alley toward a single electric light that flickered like it had been forgotten for years and could burn out at any moment. You never knew who would whisper the password at the door under the light, who would make their way through the midnight velvet curtains that muffled loud laughter and louder jazz.
Maybe your family could have bought half of Fifth Avenue, or maybe you couldn’t even buy new shoes. More likely, you lived somewhere in between, with work that paid your bills and the hope, one day, of something a little more. At the Nightingale, it didn’t matter who you were in the daytime. If you could hold your booze and let loose on the dance floor and keep a secret for a stranger, you were in.
They came looking for excitement, for the thrill of breaking a law that no one liked anyway. They came to dance and drink and maybe find a new friend, the sort of friend who—¬ after a glass or three of champagne—¬ would meet them in a quiet corner to get a little bit friendlier.
They came because they loved the music, the way it curled through the air and carried them across the floor, the way the singer’s voice filled the room and made their hearts ache.
They came for the party. They came to escape.
If they were lucky, they could pretend that whatever waited for them back at home didn’t exist. They could lose themselves in the music and the arms of someone new. They could feel free, even if it would never last, because in that moment nothing mattered but the next dance, the next drink, the next hour.
If they were lucky, they found what they were looking for, and they left before trouble could find them.
But not everyone was lucky.
***
Vivian recognized the sound of danger before she even realized what she was hearing.
Twilight had settled on the city, humid and heavy and speckled with the glow of streetlamps. She and Beatrice Henry—¬ Beatrice Bluebird, as she was known at the Nightingale, where she sang six nights a week—¬ moved through it with the practiced carefulness of two women who were used to navigating New York’s streets alone. Their steps were quick, but their eyes were quicker, always on the lookout for a man who might be trouble or a cop who might be trailing them.
The Nightingale paid off the police weekly, like any other dance hall or juice joint. But everyone who worked there knew to be wary just the same.
It was that wariness that sent a prickle of warning down Vivian’s back when they were two blocks from the Nightingale’s back entrance.
“Bea—¬ ” Vivian tossed out a hand to stop her friend in the middle of the sidewalk. A few steps ahead of them, a cat yowled as it ran out of a narrow alley. “You hear that?”
For a moment, the only sound out of the ordinary was the distant grumble of thunder. Then Vivian heard it again.
“Look a little closer, pal.” The voice was low and menacing, snaking out of the shadows and clearly not meant to be overheard. “I want to make sure you and me is on the same page.”
“Viv—¬ ” Bea hissed, but Vivian couldn’t help herself; she took a step forward, just enough to peek down the alley.
Halfway down the narrow stretch of filthy brick walls, two men were just visible in the fast-¬ fading light. One had his back against a wall. He was the taller of the two, but he still shrank back from the menacing bulk of the second figure. That one loomed toward him, his wide shoulders cutting off any escape as he shoved some kind of paper toward the nervous man’s face.
“—told you, when I have something, I’ll let you—”
The menacing man shoved him against the wall, the gesture nearly careless enough to hide the violence of it. The voice broke off with a grunt of pain, but it had been enough. Usually, Vivian would have stayed far away from anything that sounded like a beating and wasn’t her business. But she recognized that voice.
“Don’t interrupt,” the menacing man snarled. “My boss don’t take kindly to rude fu—”
“It’s Spence,” Vivian hissed.
Bea tried to pull her away. “It’s not our business. We can tell Silence or Benny,” she whispered, naming two of the bruisers who worked at the Nightingale keeping customers—¬ and anyone else who needed it—¬ in line. “They’ll come handle it.”
“That’ll take too long.” Vivian shook her head, pulling away from Bea’s cautious hand and running down the alley toward trouble. “Hey! Leave him alone!”
The bruiser barely glanced over his shoulder at her, just cocked his fist back and drove it, almost casually, into the nervous man’s stomach. He doubled over, heaving and gasping for air, as his assailant tipped his hat mockingly. “We’ll be seeing you soon, boyo. You can count on it.”
He was gone before Vivian could reach them. She stood, panting and staring at the gap between buildings where he had disappeared. A drizzling rain began to fall, plastering her hair against her cheeks. She wasn’t dumb enough to go after him.
“You okay, Spence?” she asked instead, turning toward the remaining man as he braced his hands on his knees.
“Swell,” croaked the Nightingale’s second bartender, a lanky, mouthy, handsome grump. “What the hell are you doing here?”
“Apparently chasing off the fella who was about to beat you to a pulp,” she said, stung. Spence had been working at the Nightingale all summer and still hadn’t managed to endear himself to any of the other staff. But Vivian had expected at least some gratitude. Instead, he scowled at her like she was the one who had just punched him in the stomach, not the one who had run the attacker off. “But no need to say thanks or anything.”
He hauled himself upright, wincing. “I had it handled, you know,” he said, still sounding resentful. “I didn’t need a rescue.”
“Sure you did, pal,” Bea said, joining them at last. “That was a stupid thing to do, by the way,” she added, glancing at Vivian as she opened her umbrella and held it over both their heads. “Be glad he didn’t have a friend waiting to beat the stuffing out of you too.”
“My stuffing’s doing just fine,” Spence groused, pushing his wet hair off his forehead and straightening his jacket and tie.
“What was that about?” Vivian asked, laying a hand on his arm. “Spence? Are you in trouble?”
***
Excerpt from LAST DANCE BEFORE DAWN by Katharine Schellman. Copyright 2025 by Katharine Schellman. Reproduced with permission from Katharine Schellman. All rights reserved.
Book Details:
Genre: Historical Mystery
Published by: Minotaur Books
Publication Date: May 26, 2026 | Paperback
Number of Pages: 350
ISBN: 978-1250325822
Shop The Book: Last Dance Before Dawn
Shop The Series: The Nightingale Mysteries
Shop My Stack: 2026 Books Read
This is the second series I have read by Katharine Schellman, and it is the second time I have entered a world she created not ever wanting to leave. First I found myself in nineteenth century London with the Lily Adler series, and this time I was getting dolled up in my sequins and dancing shoes to step into the roaring twenties and never look back.
If you could spend one night at The Nightingale in 1920s New York, would you be drinking, dancing, or watching from the shadows?
The Story
Last Dance Before Dawn is the fourth and final book in the Nightingale Mystery series, set in the glamorous and dangerous underground world of 1920s New York City. Vivian Kelly has built a home and a found family at The Nightingale, a speakeasy where no one cares who you are in the daylight. But when a stranger from Chicago arrives looking to settle old scores, it sets off a chain of events that puts everyone Vivian loves in danger. Someone is hunting them. And they will not stop until a years-old mystery is finally unravelled.
Reading Experience
From the moment you open this book, 2026 ceases to exist. The dialogue, the atmosphere, the clothing, the prohibition, the unspoken rules of society all place you immediately and completely into the nineteen twenties. Real life does not exist when you are reading this. And that was completely okay with me.
Every piece of this book and this series had such a vibrant quality to it, from the characters themselves to the buildings and the streets. The writing was so alive and energizing that the books had such a tangible life to them. Every single scene was written in a way where I felt like I had really been there. It did not feel like a book or a third party experience. I was there in The Nightingale. I was friends with Vivian and Bea and Danny and Honor. I held my breath when they held theirs. I was silent when they were hiding. I felt emboldened when they needed to be brave. I was a part of every single page.
Schellman’s writing is so immersive and so precise that it does something rare. It does not just transport you to another time. It makes you feel like you belong there.
Characters
These characters are tough and deservingly so. They are not your typical proper polite society men and women. By day they may have respectable jobs and respectable personalities, but at night they throw all of that to the wind as they step into their illegal nightclub, dancing with people they would never be seen with in public, wearing clothing that would be shameful in the light of day, drinking and flirting and living freely. But that freedom did not come easy. They were constantly in danger. Raids by the police. Dangerous and threatening people coming through their doors. Being blackmailed, threatened, sometimes watching people be murdered. And through all of it they had to be tough and smart and careful about who they could really trust.
That is what made them so lovable.
I absolutely adored Vivian. She had such a warm, compassionate, welcoming personality while still navigating just how tough and untrusting she sometimes had to be in order to survive that world. I loved Bea and how she seemed to breathe the very essence of life and beauty and song. I loved Danny, and especially watching him evolve across the series from bartender and business partner to a man with a heart and a family, finding happiness and direction in his life along the way. And I so loved Honor, as complex and sometimes seemingly heartless as she could be. She had her reasons. She protected her people and her nightclub unapologetically. And sometimes that looked like coldness. But really it was love. It was fierce, protective, unconditional love for the found family she had built inside an illegal speakeasy in the middle of prohibition New York.
The villains in this series and in this book were so perfectly, wonderfully typical twenties villains and I mean that in the absolute best way. From the way they thought, the brutish entitlement they carried, the way they acted, and even down to the language they used. Those nuanced twenties slang words and phrases, things like fellas and doll and little lady and swell, just completely put you in the heart of that world in a way that felt so authentic and so specific to the era.
Heartbeat
At its heart this series is about found family. So many of these characters did not have healthy families of origin, and the nature of their night lives forced them to figure out very quickly who they could trust and who they could not. When you find those select few you can trust your life to in a sea of people you cannot, those people become your family. You would do anything for them. Defend them, protect them, support them no matter what. That thread runs through every single book in this series and it never loses its power.
There is also this deeply felt theme of self identity woven through everything. When you are being threatened and blackmailed and betrayed and you are not sure who to trust, you have to have a strong sense of self just to survive. And I think that is exactly what Vivian was building across all four books. In Last Dance Before Dawn she finally found it. After everything she had been put through across the series, she finally figured out who she was, what side she was on, who she trusted, and what she actually wanted from this life and from the people in it.
Final Thoughts
I knew I was going to be reviewing book four for Partners in Crime Tours and having loved the Lily Adler series so much I immediately bought books one through three of the Nightingale series before I even started. I devoured all four books in one weekend. A book a day. And as much as I loved that intensive immersive experience I am absolutely heartbroken it is over so quickly.
I want to recommend this to everyone. Fans of historical fiction, women’s fiction, women sleuths, and murder mysteries will love it completely. But honestly both the Lily Adler series and the Nightingale Mystery series are so beautifully written that I think you could enjoy and appreciate them even if this is not your typical genre. Please just read them. Start with book one and clear your weekend because you are going to need it.
Don’t forget to enter the author giveaway below!
Thank you to Partners In Crime Tours for letting me read and review this book as part of the tour.
Tour Participants:
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Author Bio:
Katharine Schellman is an award-winning author of historical crime fiction, including the Nightingale Mysteries and the Lily Adler Mysteries, whose work has been called “worthy of Rex Stout or Agatha Christie” (Library Journal). Her books have been nominated for an Edgar and a Silver Falchion, and she has won a Zibby Media National Book Award for “Best Book for the History Lover.” A former actor, onetime political consultant, and graduate of William & Mary, Katharine lives and writes in the mountains of Virginia.
Catch Up With Katharine Schellman:
www.katharineschellman.com
Amazon Author Profile
Goodreads – @katharineschellman
BookBub – @katharineschellman
Instagram – @katharinewrites
Facebook – @katharineschellman
This is a giveaway hosted by Partners in Crime Virtual Book Tours for Katharine Schellman. See the widget for entry terms and conditions. Void where prohibited.
The giveaway is for: $25 Bookshop.org gift card
One response to “Review: Last Dance Before Dawn by Katharine Schellman”
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Such an amazing review! I absolutely love when books can totally transport you there and… make you feel like you belong.
It is so fun seeing you being such a fan! LOL Thanks so much for sharing!
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