Missouri Mystery: A DECEPTIVE HOMECOMING, Anna Loan-Wilsey

The fourth in the Hattie Davish mystery series, A DECEPTIVE HOMECOMING, is scheduled for release July 28 -- just in time to slip it into the summer reading stack. Here's a well-written "traditional" mystery with intriguing setting, likeable amateur sleuth, and neatly chosen plot twists that keep the solution to Hattie's murderous puzzle out of reach until the final chapters.

Hattie Davish is a professional private secretary -- her typewriter and her shorthand skills are less important in the long run than her discretion and absolute loyalty to her employer. In the first three books of this series (A Lack of Temperance, Anything But Civil, A Sense of Entitlement), Hattie's embrace of this profession has set her aside as an unusual woman in the 1890s: one who is confident in her value and willing to take risks to protect her employer's life or reputation. Thus, Anna Loan-Wilsey brings us an "amateur sleuth" whose motives for investigating crimes (or even just extreme social disgrace!) are strong and compelling on behalf of the wealthy persons who pay for her services.

In this fourth book in the series, though, Hattie is on her own -- her employer is away, and she's abruptly responded to a request to return to her own hometown of St. Joseph, Missouri, where she attended Mrs. Chaplin's School for Women and developed her self-reliance and skills. She believes she's been asked (discreetly) to support her old schoolmate and friend Ginny, whose father has died. But things feel "off" somehow":

Ginny didn't show any visible signs [of sorrow] that I recognized: red-rimmed, puffy sad eyes, and bowed, trembling shoulders. [Instead,] Her countenance bore deep-seated dismay or displeasure and not grief. She hadn't even been holding a handkerchief. The Ginny I knew would've been inconsolable, not simply put out.

Had she changed that much in the time that I was gone?

For Hattie, being on hand for her friend was reasonable, despite the trip of halfway across the country from home. "When I'd learned of her father's sudden death, I didn't hesitate to attend the funeral and do whatever I could to ease her pain." But chapter 1 ends with Hattie's remarkable statement: "Now, after seeing the wrong body in the coffin, I wish I had never come."

There's much more wrong that a misidentified death in St. Joseph. Hattie's former teachers recruit her to visit the students and set an example for them -- everyone knows something about her recent investigative adventures! -- and almost immediately, she learns the school is in chaos: financial troubles that may involve fraudulent bookkeeping, damaged textbooks, distressed staff members and overexcited students.

The unanticipated reappearance of Hattie's suitor from her student years unsettles things further, but Hattie isn't just independent: indomitable and determined are traits she embraces. Even insisting that the rather frightening staff of the local State Lunatic Asylum allow her to look inside is something Hattie can handle, though her own past makes the experience doubly frightening for her.

Loan-Wilsey threads gentle humor into the suspense, without ever diminishing Hattie's dedication to truth and justice. Like her earlier books, this one is an enjoyable, satisfying read, meeting all the best expectations for a traditional mystery: red herrings, mixed motives, characters who have secrets (and what about Hattie's own?). No need to read the others first, though -- the books are nicely independent (like Hattie!), and although they are clearly well researched, the history never gets in the way of Loan-Wilsey's best skill: spinning a good story with ample rewards in the reading.

Anna Loan-Wilsey, A LACK OF TEMPERANCE - Murder and Adventure Among Women Activists, 1892

Living in the place I love best -- northern Vermont -- does mean I don't travel in the South very much. That can be a drawback: I lack knowledge and experience, other than from a few short visits to, say, Virginia, West Virginia, Louisiana, northern Florida.

But that same gap becomes a plus, when I find a well-written mystery or work of crime fiction that carries me beyond the Mason-Dixon line and brings a location vividly into my mind's eye. Karin Slaughter's Criminal did that for me this year (Atlanta, GA), and so did Julia Keller's A Killing in the Hills (West Virginia); this week, I savored another introduction to a Southern locale, with Anna Loan-Wilsey's debut mystery, A LACK OF TEMPERANCE.

You already know from the review title that this is a "historical" mystery: It takes place as American women struggled to set aside the bonds of the Victorian era, and while women's right to vote (which wouldn't arrive until 1920 in the United States) was still tightly engaged with another "family values" issue -- drinking alcohol. Prohibition, the outlawing of alcohol, would pass nationally before women voted nationally. Like the vote, thought, it was attempted many times locally, and still holds in some "dry" towns.

Loan-Wilsey opens her well-paced and adventurous tale with a scene of fiery risk, as "typewriter" (secretary/administrative assistant) Hattie Davish tries to find her new employer in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. Referred to the position via telegram from her previous and much-adored employer, Hattie has no idea who "Mrs. Trevelyan" is, or even how to find her -- the hotel provides Hattie with an adjoining room, but Mrs. Trevelyan isn't on hand to welcome the secretary. What a shock to discover that the tiny elderly lady at the heart of the downtown demonstration, swinging an ax through a saloon window and screeching "Home wrecker!," is Hattie Davish's newest boss. As the police carry off the struggling anti-alcohol campaigner, Hattie's bewilderment vies with a sense of horror. She's expected to work for this?

Yet Loan-Wilsey cleverly captures the elements that readers know can lead rapidly to crime: passion, extreme commitment, public violence, gender battles, jealousy, naked ambition. About the only strong motive not in play is love, and although a touch of lust-with-romance raises its head now and then, A LACK OF TEMPERANCE avoids mushy scenes and instead presses briskly forward, attentive to the complexity of a political organization, a social crisis, and the frictions among and against a large group of committed women.

Soon Hattie herself is seized, literally, by an angry stranger on one of the resort town's near-vertical staircases, someone who's determined to dissuade Hattie from any role in the action:

"Why couldn't you leave it alone?"

"Let me go."

"Why couldn't you keep your stupid mouth shut?"

"Let me go!"

I kicked out and struck a blow with the heel of my boot. The figure yelped, releasing me from his grip. Futilely grasping for a hold, I screamed, powerless to stop my backwards fall. For a few heartbeats, I was airborne. I tried to brace my fall with my hands but my knee hit first, tossing me hard onto my back farther down the stairs. I gasped for breath. Something wet dripped down my face and I could taste blood in my mouth. Cold air pierced the exposed skin on my shoulders and legs; my stockings were in shreds. My right foot was tangled in the torn hem of my dress. My knee throbbed and the palms of my hands stung. I could feel what was left of my bonnet crumpled beneath me, the ribbon still attached to the hatpin in my hair.

(That sure puts those dated clothing items in their place, doesn't it?) Hattie's a tough cookie, and this won't slow her down. Is her new employer missing? Languishing in jail? Hiding? Davish is on the trail, and a mere brush with death won't stop her.

Harding Springs

When I finished reading A LACK OF TEMPERANCE -- which I enjoyed very much -- I checked on whether Eureka Springs was an actual place. Indeed, it is: A "Victorian resort village" with steep winding streets, it sounds like a Martha's Vineyard village turned vertical (there's my New England background coming through, sorry), and it includes more than 140 springs! Small wonder that it is both a location of Native American significance and a place where people sought cures from "the waters."

Moreover, the town for a short time was the home of Bible-toting Temperance campaigner Carrie Nation, who swung a hatchet along with her Good Book. I'm delighted to have discovered this patch of vibrant American history, in the midst of reading a lively "amateur sleuth" novel.

Carrie (Carry A.) Nation

One more detail: Although this is technically a debut book for librarian/information specialist Anna Loan-Wilsey, I can't believe it's her first book; there must be a  thick stack of earlier manuscripts in a drawer (or on a hard drive). A LACK OF TEMPERANCE brings an Ozark town and a good mystery to life, and promises more of the Hattie Davish mysteries to come. (See the author's website for details...) Well done!