Brill, Toni [Midge Cohen #1], (Date with a Dead Doctor) [hc, St. Martin’s Press, 1991] 978-0312054090 [pb, Worldwide Library, 1992] 978-0373261093 [In this series debut, Midge Cohen’s busybody mother fixes her up on a blind date with Dr. Leon Skripnik, an immigrant physician. The date does not go particularly well, but things take a much worse turn when the doctor is abruptly murdered, making Midge the last person to see him alive. As the police circle, Midge finds herself relentlessly hounded by her mother, the deceased doctor’s erratic ex-wife, and a mysterious relative named “Cousin Shmuel” who has recently arrived from the “Old Country”. To clear her name and make sense of the chaos, Midge is forced to put her Russian language skills to use and navigate an eccentric web of Brighton Beach characters, family drama, and old-world secrets.
United States · Fiction author
Toni Brill
“Toni Brill” was a joint pseudonym used by Anthony Olcott (1947–2012), a specialist in Russian affairs, Colgate U. academic, and US intelligence community analyst, and his wife Martha Brill Olcott (1949–2024), a scholar on Central Asia and Colgate U. academic. Their two humorous, cozy novels are set in Brooklyn and feature Midge Cohen, a fluent Russian-speaking former scholar and children’s book author who repeatedly finds herself entangled in international intrigue and murder, heavily exasperated by her overbearing mother, Pearl.
Brill, Toni [Midge Cohen #2], (Date With a Plummeting Publisher: A Midge Cohen Mystery) [hc, St. Martin’s Press, 1993] 978-0312087531 [pb, Worldwide Library, 1995] 978-0373261611 [Feeling discouraged after her recent adult fiction draft and Girl Scout mystery novels receive a lukewarm reception, Midge reluctantly agrees to another one of her mother’s fix-ups. This time, her date is an eccentric publisher of Russian literature. The date goes horribly, and Midge quickly realizes she is merely being used as a pawn in the publisher’s high-stakes game involving Soviet politics and blackmail. The very next morning, the publisher plummets to his death from a hotel window. While the authorities lean toward suicide, a highly suspicious Midge teams up with a handsome policeman named Mike Russo to unravel a dangerous conspiracy that stretches from Brooklyn all the way back to the collapsing Soviet Union. [Google/AI]