“Loveday Brooke” by Catherine Louisa Pirkis

Sherlock Holmes was the most famous detective of the 1890s and early 1900s, but he wasn’t the only one. His fictional contemporaries included Dr. Thorndyke (by R. Austin Freeman), Martin Hewitt (by Martin Morrison), Max Carrados by Ernest Bramah, and several others. It was a rich age for detectives who solved crimes with their deductive ability.

Another Sherlock Holmes contemporary was Loveday Brooke, the “Lady Detective” created by Catherine Louisa Pirkis. Pirkis was a novelist and short story writer who published the Loveday Brooke detective stories in Ludgate Magazine in 1894. Brooke is a former wealthy society woman who had lost her financial security and must work. And she’s employed by a London detective agency. The seven stories had been republished as Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective by Midwest Classic Press (they are also available on Amazon, but you can get the collection for free at the Midwest Classic link).

Catherine Louisa Pirkis

In “The Black Bag Left on a Doorstep,” Loveday Brooke investigates the theft of a large quanity of jewelry. In “The Murder at Troyte’s Hill,” she’s investigating the murder of a lodge keeper at a large estate. “The Redhill Sisterhood” concerns a nun-like group of women who may (or may not) be the front for a burglary gang. “A Princess’s Vengeance” concerns what happens when love is almost thwarted, and a young girl goes missing. 

“Drawn Daggers” is ostensibly about a missing necklace but soons becomes a case of substituted identities. A blank check is stolen in “The Ghost of Fountain Lane.” And a young girl goes missing in “Missing!,” and the answer for why will be found in the distant past.

Brooke uses her powers of observance and her experience with human nature to see what others miss. Her insights are less spectacular than those of Sherlock Holmes but they are no less effective. 

Loveday Brooke is a window into the historical past of the mystery genre, a window framed by an unusual and unexpected “lady detective.”

"Hand Me Down the Dawn" by Mary Harwell Sayler

It’s 1895. Catherine Caldwell, known as “Cat,” is 19 years old. She’s digging her father’s grave; her mother died some years before. She hasn’t had much education. The people of the town she lives near think of her as rather odd. With no other family, she decides to fulfill a kind of promise to her mother and heath south to Florida, specifically to Siloam Springs on the St. John’s River, a place she’s never visited but which holds the promise of a better life.

She disguises herself as a boy, wearing her father’s dungarees and boots. She hops a freight train headed south, and after she’s discovered and rather painfully thrown off the train, she meets Raff Jordan. Jordan is clearly a man of the gentleman class, and he is piloting his raft of goods to Siloam Springs with the help of a young local man named Wyatt Tate. For several weeks, the three make their way together on the St. John’s River from Jacksonville. Cat discovers that Jordan is a preservationist – someone deeply concerned by the destruction of Florida’s natural habitats by phosphate ore miners and others.

Cat discovers herself liking Jordan, a liking that grows stronger. But their relationship often seems like oil and water. Once they reach Siloam Springs and the big steamboat docked there, Jordan deposits Cat with the Tate family and takes off. Ma Tate isn’t fooled for a moment – she knows Cat is no young boy. And she helps her get a job working as kitchen help at the local hotel and establishing a double life – kitchen boy cleaning pots and pans and beautiful singer at the hotel.

Mary Harwell Sayler

Cat’s story is told in Hand Me Down the Dawn by Mary Harwell Sayler, first published in 1985 and now updated and republished. Sayler is a poet, editor, and writer whose published books include Living in the Nature Poem, Faces in a Crowd, Outside Eden, Beach Songs & Wood Chimes: Poems for Children, Christian Writer’s Guide, Praise: Poems, and What the Bible Says About Love, among many others. She lives in Florida.

Hand Me Down the Dawn is a historical romance, and Sayler has done her historical and environmental homework in telling Cat’s story. And it is a sweet, winsome story, including enough twists and turns to keep the reader guessing if Cat will find the life and the love she’s looking for.

Related:

My review of Lost in Faith: and poetry.

My review of Living in the Nature Poem.

My review of Christian Writer’s Guide.

My review of Faces in a Crowd.

My review of Praise: Poems.

Wallace Stevens and Walking the Landscape – at Tweetspeak Poetry.

Top photograph: Lucas New Lines operated steamboats on the Ocklawaha and St. John’s rivers in Florida in the 1890s.