Hilda Johansson Series

“The good old days” aren’t all they’re cracked up to be . . . at least in Jeanne M. Dams’s turn-of-the-century novels. Her woman on the spot, Hilda Johansson, a maid in the Studebaker household in South Bend, sees what’s going on among the rich, suffers what’s going on among the less fortunate . . . and has no trouble telling it like it is. In the fourth in this series, Hilda’s situation is still fragile. She’s still crammed into a small house with her family of seven, and her happiness at being reunited with them is bittersweet. Worst of all, her 12-year-old brother, Eric, can’t hold a job. When a friend of Eric’s runs away to join the circus and is found beaten, perhaps worse, events take a desperate turn.

The Studebaker household is in turmoil; the news that President McKinley has been assassinated is more than anyone can stand. South Bend, Indiana, is not a hotbed of anarchist activity, but something is clearly going on. When McKinley’s death is blamed on foreign-born anarchists, Hilda Johansson, a recent immigrant, is concerned that fellow immigrants might be swept up in a wave of xenophobia. Despite orders to mind her own business, she sets out to discover exactly what is happening, no matter what it might cost her. In Dams’s second Hilda Johansson novel, following Death in Lacquer Red, the brilliant sleuthing has everything a traditional mystery fan wants.