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Locked Out
Ballerina Dita Marx and her composer husband, Dan Di Bello, have a two o’clock appointment at the now-boarded-up Harlem Center for the Arts with board president, Arlen Van Aiken, whose board voted to close down the center, which was very painful for the community, as well as Dita and Dan. They want to retrieve The Phoenix, a statue created in memorial to three board members lost when the World Trade Center collapsed September 11, 2001. But Dita is late, and Dan goes into the center looking for Arlen, whom he finds murdered in the basement, bludgeoned with the very statue Dan has come to collect. When the bodies begin to pile up and Dan is later arrested for murder, Dita is outraged and determined to prove his innocence—even if it means risking her own life…
314 pages, Kindle Edition
Published March 16, 2019
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October 6, 2023
Up front, I should say that I knew the author, and I am currently very familiar with her family. They are all artists of varying kinds, and it is this sensibility that is at the heart of this book, in this case primarily dance. The discipline is extremely difficult and incredibly taxing on the body, and like pro athletes the length of top-class careers is usually short. You can be an actor or musician or singer for decades, but dancers...not so much. But is an art, and sometimes the dedication to the muse is all-absorbing.
Dita, the heroine, is one of those artists who often tune out the world's practicalities, and in this story it is this flaw that blinds her to the crimes that befall the urban arts center she founded. I give away nothing here to say that the story revolves around a scam involving HUD funds. Such loans were intended to give groups loans to enable them to purchase derelict city properties, repair them, then use them for community activities and residences, but where there's big government money, there are platoons of crooks. Just think of the recent misuse of COVID funds.
In the end the bad guy gets his, and the center lives on, but true justice isn't necessarily served.
Dita, the heroine, is one of those artists who often tune out the world's practicalities, and in this story it is this flaw that blinds her to the crimes that befall the urban arts center she founded. I give away nothing here to say that the story revolves around a scam involving HUD funds. Such loans were intended to give groups loans to enable them to purchase derelict city properties, repair them, then use them for community activities and residences, but where there's big government money, there are platoons of crooks. Just think of the recent misuse of COVID funds.
In the end the bad guy gets his, and the center lives on, but true justice isn't necessarily served.
Displaying 1 of 1 review