Publication Date: June 2, 2026
REESE’S BOOK CLUB PICK • A gripping novel about two trailblazing women on opposite sides of the law—a prosecutor and a madam—who team up to bring down notorious Mob boss Lucky Luciano in 1930s New York, from the New York Times bestselling authors of the million-copy bestseller The Personal Librarian.
Eunice Carter, assistant district attorney for the City of New York and Manhattan’s first Black female prosecutor, has her sights set on the one and only Lucky Luciano, head of New York City’s five largest organized crime families. Other prosectors have tried to bring down Lucky, but they’ve all focused on the crime syndicate’s traditional businesses—bootlegging, gambling, loan sharking, and drug dealing—or tax evasion. No one has thought to approach the mob through its role in prostitution. Until Eunice. But she can’t get Luciano alone.
Polly Adler has worked long and hard to build up her high-class brothel business. Her client list is filled with well-known names, both the famous and the infamous, who all know her booze is top-notch, her music first-rate, her food exquisite, and her girls the best. But Lucky has gone too far, putting her girls in danger, and Polly finally sees the chance to end his reign once and for all.
Together, Eunice and Polly fashion a case utilizing a network of women. Bridging the enormous divide between them and risking their own lives, they assemble evidence bit by bit, under the nose of the man they’re trying to convict. It is this very alliance—of two women from vastly different worlds—that launches the most sensational trial New York City has ever seen.
Set in 1930s New York City, A Pair of Aces by Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray has depth and kept me turning the pages to see what would happen next.
The story is divided into three sections. Mobsters and violence dominate, along with women of the night who work in a brothel run by Polly, a Jewish woman. Eunice is an assistant district attorney working with others to take down organized crime. She’s a black woman in a sea of white men. Polly and Eunice’s stories are interwoven, and they tell their stories in alternating chapters. While not friends, they become allies by the end of the book.
When a mob hit takes place on one of their own, and he succumbs to his injuries, the case the district attorneys were building against him is dead in the water, or will it be redirected? It was interesting to learn why he was targeted.
As we get deeper into the story, there are more layers to the criminal intent and how the mob gets involved in all manner of businesses and takes them over. Recognizable names and locations are dropped throughout the story, and they are important to it. Many vivid descriptions transport the readers to many of the locations, some of which are well known to me.
When one of Polly’s girls goes missing after the mob starts involving itself in prostitution, Polly does all she can to locate her. We delve deeply into how prostitution is now being run as an industry, and it’s not pretty. Polly hightails it to Hawaii after there are raids on many of the brothels simultaneously. But who’s the snitch?
We watch the district attorney’s office gather clues, and no one seems to do it better than Eunice. The trial itself does come to fruition, but will justice be served? There is closure as the story wraps up. The only thing missing for me is an epilogue.
A Pair of Aces makes allies of two women from different walks of life and puts many in danger as they try to convict the mob and those involved in organized crime.
Marie Benedict is a lawyer with more than ten years’ experience as a litigator. A graduate of Boston College and the Boston University School of Law, she is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of The Only Woman in the Room, The Mystery of Mrs. Christie, Carnegie’s Maid, The Other Einstein, and Lady Clementine. All have been translated into multiple languages. She lives in Pittsburgh with her family.
Victoria Christopher Murray is an acclaimed author with more than one million books in print. She has written more than twenty novels, including Stand Your Ground, a NAACP Image Award Winner for Outstanding Fiction and a Library Journal Best Book of the Year. She holds an MBA from the NYU Stern School of Business.
