Chasing the Devil

It wasn't enough that the Toy Soldier should meet his disastrous end on the heels of Felix the Cat's midair explosion over Broadway at the first Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, but to add insult to injury, Dorothy Parker comes face to face with a crazed murderer. War-weary Americans are taking a sober look at our nation's Bill of Rights at a time when no one cares to be sober, even though sobriety is the law of the land. The Scopes Monkey Trial has tested separation of church and state, and although sixty years have passed since the Thirteenth Amendment became law, Negros still suffer indignities from the resurging power of the Klan after the release of Birth of a Nation. While Parker and Benchley search for an assassin, the reader is joyously carried along to Harlem's famous Cotton Club, to the opening night of Noel Coward's new play, Hay Fever, for a romp through the University Club with Groucho Marx and a chase through Hubert's Museum, winding up high above a jam-packed crowd in Times Square on New Year's Eve.