The Case of the Missing Maid

November 1, 2024

Osler, author of the multi-award-nominated Devil's Chew Toy, launches a new quozy mystery series inspired by real-life Pinkerton detective Kate Warne. In 1898 Chicago, 21-year-old Harriet Morrow begins her job as the first woman detective for the Prescott Agency. Her first case involves finding a missing maid, but she uncovers dangerous truths as she investigates. Prepub Alert.

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November 1, 2024
In 1898, a female detective proves she's no lady while investigating a case that takes her from wealthy to seedy areas of Chicago. Bold and ambitious, Miss Harriet Morrow has wrangled herself a position as the first female field operative for the Prescott Detective Agency, quite an experiment for agency principal Theodore Prescott. Maybe it's her ankles, which Prescott deemed "thick and sturdy" in her interview, but Harriet just isn't built like other women in the late 1890s, starting but not ending with her interest in a nontraditional role. She's determined to make good by finding Agnes Wozniak, the live-in maid to idiosyncratic widow Pearl Bartlett. On her initial visit to Agnes' quarters in Pearl's stately Italianate home, Harriet sees that the room has been tossed and a window left open, turning the disappearance into a likely kidnapping. The only agency colleague who helps Harriet track down any leads is Matthew McCabe, whose friendliness extends to acquainting Harriet with the right end of the gun--the one where she's doing the shooting, at least during practice. Learning marksmanship doesn't make Harriet feel any safer, for her investigation brings her to unfriendly neighborhoods whose unsavory denizens she's certain would have made off with the pretty young maid if given the chance. She does find an ally in Agnes' older sister, Barbara, who seems almost as eager to impress as Harriet is. As she feels herself making headway, a saboteur starts working against her. Her time to find Agnes is limited not only by safety concerns but by her need to prove herself as a woman detective in her first case. Osler puts a queer 19th-century spin on a familiar tough-gal type.

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Starred review from November 18, 2024
The first woman hired by a Chicago detective agency faces one daunting challenge after another in this excellent historical series launch from Osler (Cirque du Slay). When Harriet Morrow reports for her first day at the Prescott Detective Agency in 1898, she’s determined to make a success of it and leave her dull bookkeeping career behind. Yet from the minute Harriet walks through the door, she’s met with skepticism from her male colleagues. Only the boss, Theodore Prescott, believes in her, but even he gives her an apparently toothless assignment: report to the home of Pearl Bartlett, an elderly and often confused widow, to follow up on her complaint that her maid, Agnes Wozniak, has disappeared. While Pearl has a reputation for crying wolf, Harriet believes her this time and suspects that Agnes has been abducted. As Harriet digs deeper into the case, she also grapples with escalating hostility at the detective agency, wariness among Agnes’s peers in Chicago’s Polish community, and fears that her secret life as a lesbian might be exposed and used against her. As the intrepid, bike-riding lady detective plunges into Chicago’s seedy gay clubs and criminal hangouts, Osler doles out well-placed clues that set the table for a knockout conclusion. With lush historical detail, optimistic but plausible gender politics, and an unforgettable heroine, this series is primed for success. Agent: Stephany Evans, Ayesha Pande Literary.