Death of a New American, by Mariah Fredericks. Minotaur Books, 2019

In Fredericks second in this historical mystery series, it’s 1912, and ladies maid Jane Prescott is accompanying her charge, Louise, to the Long Island mansion of the Bentleys. Louise is marrying William Tyler at his aunt and uncle’s home, and they are going early to get everything set up properly. Uncle Charles is the prosecutor notorious for going after the Black Hand, the Italian organized crime ring of the time. Because of this, and also because of the recent death of one of their children, his wife Alva is intensely worried about the children’s safety. She doesn’t want them outside, even with the armed guards patrolling the property, and the windows are shut and locked most of the time (although it is odd that, for all her worries about their safety, Alva spends very little time with the kids!). When the nanny, Sofia Bernardi, is murdered one night in the nursery, with the window left open and baby Freddy out of his crib, everyone’s minds assume it was an attempted kidnapping, or an attempt to kill the baby.



Jane sets out to solve the crime. Once again, she encounters journalist Michael Behan and her Marxist friend, Anna. She also has the assistance of 6 year old Mabel Tyler, who is precocious and smart. Along with the mystery, the author touches of woman’s suffrage, racism, and classism. Even Behan, who is supposed to be a good guy, shows a nasty bigoted side to himself. The sinking of the Titanic, and the loss of life, hangs as a shadow over the proceedings. Not to mention pre-wedding jitters on the part of Louise and William.



Despite the classism of the day, Jane is pretty much accepted as an equal by her employers and the other high class folks, and she seems to have an awful lot of spare time for a ladies maid, which made it hard to see this as taking place more than a hundred years ago. The story is very slow. The story is full of great historical detail, but, sadly, the characters never really come to life. Three and a half stars, if I could give that.

The Right of the Subjects, by Jude Starling. Damask Rose Press, 2014

In ‘The Right of the Subjects’, historical novelist Starling sets her tale in the women’s suffrage movement in England. The early 1900s was a politically volatile time in Great Britain; it was not only women who could not vote but many men of the poorer classes couldn’t, either. It was also the time of the rise of labor unions fighting for decent wages and working conditions. It’s out of the working class of northern England that Evanna Bailie- Evie- comes; she goes to a suffragist protest as a lark with her sister Amie and the movement becomes a major part of her life. The sixteen year old woman meets Annie Kenney and other avid members of the suffrage movement and she sees a possible way out of her tedious, back breaking life as a weaver in a cotton mill. And she’s right; joining the movement has her traveling, having time to develop her artistic talent, and exploring sex. It also means going to prison regularly for protesting, going on hunger strikes and being violently force fed, and even rejecting water for so long that kidney problems arose in those that did so.

While I know a little bit about the British Woman’s Suffrage movement- mainly about upper class women such as Mrs. Pankhurst- I was completely ignorant about the role working class women played. I should have known that there would have to be a lot of less well off women to create the mobs that were willing to be arrested, beaten, sexually assaulted, and have their health and lives risked in prison!

Evie is an interesting and, as the story goes on, a sympathetic, protagonist; she undergoes a lot of growth in the story and has the good luck to find out who she truly wants to be. There is a strong cast of varied characters both historical and fictional; the movement brought different classes of women together as allies for the first time, and same sex relationships became quietly accepted. Told from Evie’s point of view, the story engages and satisfies.

Starling researches her books thoroughly, and with this book she includes ‘extras’, rather like a DVD; essays about things she found out about the suffrage movement. While certainly not necessary to understand the story, they add depth and make the reader appreciate the movement and the women who created it more.

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