{"id":5035,"date":"2026-02-19T01:30:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-19T01:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=5035"},"modified":"2026-02-19T15:16:01","modified_gmt":"2026-02-19T15:16:01","slug":"murder-at-the-hotel-orient","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=5035","title":{"rendered":"Murder at the Hotel Orient"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>It may claim to be set in contemporary Vienna, but this novel reverberates far more with hotels\u2013and their staff\u2014from years ago. <strong>Visitors arrive at the Hotel Orient for many reasons, but the most likely are to enjoy a sexual tryst, appreciate a real good dalliance of yore, or just to hide their secrets.<\/strong> Cameras, along with all technology newer since the lightbulb, are banned. And guests are expected to adopt an alias, whether for three hours or 30 days. At the center of the hotel is American Sterling Lockwood, the cool, queer concierge and \u201ckeeper of the secrets.\u201d She is ready to make every visit memorable no matter what it takes, as is Fernando, her best friend and bellhop. But, shockingly, the unmanageable happens: a double murder is discovered one morning, a first in the Orient\u2019s history. Without technology and with a ledger full of falsehoods there is no way to decipher who the victim was or where they were going. What can be determined is that Fernando and Sterling must become\u00a0 detectives, if only to save their own skins.<em>\u2014Brian Kenney \u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>It may claim to be set in contemporary Vienna, but this novel reverberates far more with hotels\u2013and their staff\u2014from years ago. Visitors arrive at the Hotel Orient for many reasons,&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5034,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[30],"tags":[61,180,55,50,51,56],"class_list":["post-5035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-review","tag-amateur-sleuth","tag-debut","tag-mystery-detective","tag-suspense","tag-thrillers","tag-women-sleuths"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Orient-400x400.jpeg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Orient-400x600.jpeg","author_info":{"display_name":"Brian Kenney","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=1"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5034"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}