The Case of the Murdered Muckraker, by Carola Dunn

1923 Remington Portable typewriter

The Case of the Murdered Muckraker, by Carola Dunn, takes place in 1923. It is the tenth Daisy Dalrymple mystery. Daisy is now married to Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher of Scotland Yard. They are on their honeymoon. While ALec is in Washington consulting with the US government Daisy visits New York to see her magazine editor (for she is a writer, making her living by selling articles to magazines, a British Nellie Bly).

While at her publisher's, she sees Otis Carmody, the "murdered muckraker" of the title, shot, and then plummet to his death down an elevator shaft. Daisy at once sets out to solve the mystery.

At one point in her adventure, she meets Bessie Coleman, the first black woman to earn a pilot's license, who had a barnstorming career from 1921 to 1926, when she will die after falling out of a plane (in which she was not the pilot) while scoping out her stunt flying routine at the local airport for an up-and-coming airshow. (Bessie Coleman's presence is incidental to the plot, any aviator would have done. It's strictly an "appearance."

Some sample paragraphs:

Voices raised in anger: in the quiet when the clacking of the typewriter keys ceased, as Daisy reached the bottom of a page, the uffled sound came through the wall from the room next door.

It was not the first time. Apparently her neighbor was not of a conciliatory nature. This time there were two men and a women, Daisy was pretty sure, but try as she might, she could not make out the words. None of her business, she told herself firmly, and turned her attention back to her work.

Squealing, the REmington reluctantly released the two sheets of paper and the carbon between. Daisy ysed them to fan herself. Not yet accustomed to the indoor temperature preferred by New Yorkers, and bred as she was to an age-old tradition of roaring fires tempered by icy draughts, she found the hotel room stifling. Her battle with the balky radiator had been less successful than that with the typewriter provided by the management.