Velma Gone Awry

Award-winning author of over ten mysteries and historical novels, Matt Cost is releasing a fast-paced historical mystery, “Velma Gone Awry: A Brooklyn 8 Ballo Mystery” (April 13, 2023, Encircle Publications), which is set in the roaring ‘20s and follows a PI on a surprising, peculiar case to find the flapper daughter of a wealthy businessman.

Cost brings us back to Brooklyn in the roaring 20’s and introduces us to Hungarian PI, 8 Ballo. The search to find Fritz Hartmann’s daughter will lead him to cross paths with Dorothy Parker, Zelda and F. Scott Fitzgerald, Coleman Hawkins, Bugsy Siegel, Babe Ruth, and many more. As the 8th child in his family, Ballo's mother simply named him 8. Now in his mid-thirties, the jilted, college-educated, Great War veteran has his own private investigator business and is on a jarring journey to discover why Velma has gone awry.

Cost is an award-winning author and also a runner up in the RONE and a finalist in the Silver Falchion. He owned a mystery bookstore and was a history major at Trinity College. After reading Cost’s work, Grace J. Reviewerlady said, “a fine cast of characters and always a sprinkling of humor… engrossed from the very beginning until the final word. Thrilling and exciting, this one comes highly recommended and easily earns all five glowing stars, and InD'tale Magazine said, “…twists and turns and added thrilling lures will ensnare readers and keep the pages turning!" of the Clay Wolfe/Port Essex series.

MATT COST writes the Mainely Mystery and the Clay Wolfe/Port Essex Mystery Series. He’s also written several books of historical fiction. This is his first jaunt in combining his two loves of histories and mysteries into a historical PI mystery. Cost was a history major at Trinity College. He owned a mystery bookstore, a video store, and a gym, before serving a ten-year sentence as a junior high school teacher. In 2014 he was released and began writing. And that’s what he does. He writes histories and mysteries. Cost now lives in Brunswick, Maine, with his wife, Harper. There are four grown children: Brittany, Pearson, Miranda, and Ryan. A chocolate Lab and a basset hound round out the mix. He now spends his days at the computer, writing.