The Dead Cry Justice

September 15, 2021
A stolen sandwich plunges a society woman-turned-detective into a dangerous case. Prudence MacKenzie and Blossom the dog are enjoying a spring day in Washington Square Park, pondering whether Prudence should go to a law school just opened to women, when a desperate urchin steals her sandwich. The pair track him to a filthy cellar, where they find him with a wounded, unconscious girl whom Prudence and her cabman friend, Danny Dennis, take to a clinic run by Quakers. Not only has the victim been beaten and violated, but someone has removed her lashes and eyebrows and tattooed her to look like a doll. The urchin, her brother, stays by her side, but soon they both vanish back into the mean streets. Prudence's partner, a former Pinkerton agent, is recovering from bullet wounds but pitches in to help in an investigation which soon uncovers moral horrors in the highest reaches of society. Someone has been kidnapping young women, some of them quite wealthy, and turning them into prostitutes for a circle of men as influential as they are depraved. A well-off man who turned detective to search for his missing sister joins their efforts, and slowly they piece together a horrifying story. Never one to shy from danger, Prudence visits places from a brothel to an unusually creepy doll shop in her search for the missing boy and his sister, putting herself at risk of a fate worse than death. A reminder that detection's golden age was golden only for the well-to-do, and not always for them.

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November 8, 2021
Set in 1890, Simpson’s able sixth Gilded Age mystery (after 2020’s Death, Diamonds and Deception) finds Prudence MacKenzie, a private inquiry agent who’s considering joining New York University law school’s first class to allow women students, sitting in Washington Square Park. When a street urchin runs away with her bag lunch, Prudence follows him into the cellar of a nearby building, where she finds him guarding a teenage girl, possibly his sister, who has been beaten nearly comatose. The girl’s eyelashes and eyebrows have been replaced with tattoos, her skin is bleached artificially white, and she has been repeatedly raped. Though a Quaker refuge for the poor agrees to care for the children, who are too traumatized to speak, both vanish that night. Prudence and her investigative partner, Geoffrey Hunter, who’s recovering from gunshot wounds he suffered in the previous book, discover few convincing clues to their disappearance until a costly, elaborately dressed porcelain doll whose features resemble those of the missing girl is delivered anonymously to Prudence’s home. Cameo appearances by the real-life Nellie Bly and Jacob Riis enliven Simpson’s intricate, well-researched narrative. Fans of Victoria Thompson and Alyssa Maxwell will be pleased. Agent: Jessica Faust, BookEnds Literary.