Murder by Death

I am really liking these so far.  Amy Stewart has crafted another interesting if not nail-biting mystery around actual events and cases that Miss Constance Kopp worked on in her career.

Lady Cop Makes Trouble focuses on the case of escaped convict Von Matthesius and Kopp's efforts to recapture him.  Along the way she also investigates a landlady arrested for killing a tenant and man taking advantageous of native young girls.  Kopp's sisters play a much smaller part in this story and Stewart turns up the tension between Kopp and Sheriff Heath without so much as implying any attraction or romance (although Normal gets a few jabs in on occasion).

I kept expecting the story to drag, but it moved along well and the pacing was smooth; there's very little 'whodunnit' here so any expectations on the part of mystery lovers is going to require some adjustments.  It's definitely worth it.

As before, Stewart includes an acknowledgments and citations page at the end that discusses exactly what parts of the story were taken from newspapers and historical accounts, with relevant citations and suggested readings, and which parts of the story she made up.  It's not unreasonable to imagine that if Stewart kept writing Kopp's adventures, a reader would end up with a rather credible biography at the end of it.  I'll be hoping for a third book, at least.