The Body in the Big Apple - Tapa dura

A prequel to Katherine Hall Page's award-winning mystery series, The Body in the Big Apple vividly brings to life Faith Fairchild's early days as a single career woman in New York City.
While enjoying the early success of the Have Faith catering company, Faith runs into her old high school friend Emma Stanstead at an uptown party. As thrilled as she is to see Emma, Faith can't help but notice the distinct trace of fear in her friend's warm greeting. At a clandestine meeting the next day, Faith learns that the beautiful and wealthy Emma is being blackmailed. A series of anonymous notes threatens to give away the dark secret of Emma's past, a stain on her family's name that, if publicized, would ruin her husband's fast-rising political career.
Faith signs on as a sleuth, determined to get to the bottom of the blackmailing. Taking on her first case with the fearlessness that would later become her trademark, Faith slips into the underworld of late-eighties Manhattan, traveling between the rarefied Upper East Side and the bohemian Lower East Side to uncover secret after secret from Emma's past. The closer Faith comes to the blackmailer, the more clearly she realizes that her friend's life might be in greater danger than her reputation.