AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:
The historical novels of Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray have already introduced us to some standout women who've been forgotten by history. Their latest book, "A Pair Of Aces," is about two women who try to take down the infamous gangster Lucky Luciano in the 1930s. The authors, Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray, are here with me in the studio. Welcome to you both.
VICTORIA CHRISTOPHER MURRAY: Oh, thank you for having us. We're excited to be here.
MARIE BENEDICT: We're thrilled to be here with you.
RASCOE: Yes. Getting into "A Pair Of Aces," we learn about these two women who face down the mob, starting with the prosecutor in the district attorney's office, Eunice Carter. So, Victoria, tell me about Eunice.
MURRAY: So Eunice was the very first Black female prosecutor in New York.
RASCOE: And this is in the 1930s?
MURRAY: 1930s. Very...
RASCOE: People wouldn't believe this.
MURRAY: Wouldn't believe it. She began working first privately. She worked in women's court. Then she became part of the elite prosecution team with Thomas Dewey. Their role was to clean up organized crime in New York City.
RASCOE: OK. And so this is a real person...
MURRAY: This is a real person.
RASCOE: ...But in the book, tell me about who she is in the book when we find her.
MURRAY: Oh, well, who she is in the book. Well, she is married to the most successful dentist in Harlem. And she is really expected to be a Harlem socialite, but she wanted a little bit more. She's the daughter of activists, and so she comes from a different history than what she was expected to live in Harlem.
RASCOE: And so then, in the book, she ends up getting this ally - an unlikely ally - in this famous New York City madame, Polly Adler. So, Marie, tell me about Polly.
BENEDICT: Yes. She's definitely an unlikely ally.
RASCOE: Yes (laughter) Yeah.
BENEDICT: She was really the most famous madame of her day, not just in New York, really countrywide. She came to this country actually as a Russian Jewish immigrant at the age of 12, all by herself. And really, the streets became her only option to support herself. And so she started to build up these very different houses where she was in control, where her girls were protected. They had security. They were looked after medically. And they were so much more than what you would describe typically as a brothel, right? They were really more like private clubs. Going to Polly's became a phrase.
RASCOE: You know, I have never heard of these two women. And to be clear, they become allies in the book, but there's no - we don't know that they ever had any doings...
BENEDICT: Exactly.
MURRAY: Yes.
RASCOE: ...With each other in real life.
MURRAY: Yes.
RASCOE: How did you find these two women?
BENEDICT: You know, this is Victoria and I's third collaboration...
MURRAY: Yes.
BENEDICT: ...And each book, we're looking to do something timely and different. And with this particular book, we wanted to explore the idea of two women coming together to advance some good in the world, even though they weren't friends. In fact, in this case, you could argue they're not technically enemies, but they really are on opposite sides of the law. I was a New York City litigator myself for over a decade. And reading about Eunice, you know, really harkened back to my own experience as a young female lawyer, the way she crafted this case to utilize prostitution - mob interference and prostitution - as a way to bring down the mob against all odds. Her story was so incredible, I could not turn away from it. And that was really our entry point into the story.
RASCOE: So the idea came. What if you wrote about these...
MURRAY: Yes.
RASCOE: ...Two women and they're coming together? Did part of that come from the fact that you two have come together to write these books that you said, we want to have this, you know...
BENEDICT: Yeah, absolutely.
MURRAY: Yes. You know what's so interesting is that we wrote our first novel together, which was about one character. And as we toured for that book, people were as interested in us...
RASCOE: Yeah (laughter).
MURRAY: ...As they were the character. And they would say, I want one of you. I want one of you.
RASCOE: (Laughter).
BENEDICT: Yeah.
MURRAY: That's what they wanted, that kind of relationship. And we realized we were writing before, but now we felt we had a mission.
RASCOE: Well, and going back to the book, Eunice really has to struggle because she's a wife and a mother.
MURRAY: Yes.
RASCOE: She's in this powerful position. So what was it like digging into that? Because that was such a huge part of her story.
MURRAY: It was really interesting because her husband was successful. He had those kinds of issues with his wife being successful because he was getting ribbing from some of his friends - is your wife the man...
BENEDICT: Oh, yeah. Yes, yes.
MURRAY: ...Your being the man. And so it was interesting for her to navigate that, but she was dealing with the mob.
RASCOE: Well, do you think that women still face that sort of discrimination? Obviously, it's different. It was a different time, but do you think that women still face these kinds of challenges?
BENEDICT: Absolutely. Yeah. My generation was told that we could have it all, and that meant that you could have a career, a successful career and children and a family and a home. But sometimes I feel like perhaps the men weren't told that.
(LAUGHTER)
BENEDICT: And so the - or society wasn't told that.
RASCOE: Yeah.
BENEDICT: And so the infrastructure isn't there to support that. You definitely see them struggling with, you know, fulfilling their calling - right? - which is what Eunice was trying to do. You know, she was called to do something bigger for her community, even though her own immediate community was telling her to stay small, right? She wanted to do something more. You know, so I think we get a lot of mixed messages in our society, and I think that particular aspect of Eunice's struggle will really resonate.
RASCOE: So how do you write a book together? I'm always curious about that. What is the process? Now you should have it down. This is the third book.
(LAUGHTER)
BENEDICT: Yeah. I mean, so I kind of think of it in three stages, right? Like, the initial stage is finding the women, doing enough research to know that this is a really meaty story and exploring some of the themes that we're really interested in in exploring as partners, right? And then we work together on the outline, and that's where we're doing our deeper dive...
MURRAY: Yes. Did the research.
BENEDICT: Research - with research.
MURRAY: And one of the things I do want to say about research is that it never stops. While we're writing, we're researching because you don't know what you don't know until you don't know it.
RASCOE: Yeah.
MURRAY: Eunice got in a cab. OK. Were they called cabs? What did they look like? How did Black characters maneuver in society? Did cabs stop for them downtown? So those are things that you don't think about for research until you're actually writing the scene.
RASCOE: Writing it. OK. So ultimately, you know, this is a story about these women coming together, but there are also women who were really abused by the mob and really kind of remembering those women. I guess, what do you want the audience to remember about those women who were victims and were kind of forgotten to time?
MURRAY: You know what's so interesting about this story is before I started writing it, I thought I knew what prostitution - organized prostitution was like. I knew nothing about this industry. I did not know how violent it was for the women. And yet when it came to building this case against Lucky Luciano, there were so many other women who participated in bringing down Lucky.
BENEDICT: Exactly.
MURRAY: Marie and I often say that they were fearless during a time when they should've been really fearful.
BENEDICT: And so in some ways, it's the story of two unlikely, you know, allies coming together to make change, but it's also about the power of all these voices. All the...
MURRAY: An army. An army of women.
BENEDICT: An army of women coming together had the power to effectuate enormous change.
RASCOE: That's Marie Benedict and Victoria Christopher Murray. Their book "A Pair Of Aces" is out now. Thank you so much for joining me.
BENEDICT: Thank you so much for having us.
MURRAY: Thank you. Thank you for having us.
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