THE CASE OF THE MURDERED MUCKRAKER

Three weeks after her first assignment as the only female operative in Chicago’s Prescott Agency in The Case of the Missing Maid (2024), Harriet Morrow lands a second, even juicier case.

When freelance journalist Eugene Eldridge is discovered dead in the corridor of a South Side tenement, Gerald Cole, leader of the Municipal Voters’ League, wants his old friend Theodore Prescott to find the killer. The police, who’ve already arrested Lucy Fara, the single mother of four who found the body, can’t be counted on for any help, and Prescott is convinced that of all his operatives, Harriet is best able to chat up Lucy’s female neighbors in the University of Chicago Settlement without arousing suspicions. Alexi Scholtz, the Progressive Age editor for whom Eldridge was writing his story, identifies two likely suspects: Aldermen Irish Dan Walsh and Mike Powers, aka Saloon Micky, both members in bad standing of the Gray Wolves, a cabal of corrupt city officials. Since this is 1898 Chicago, the Wolves’ bench is deep, and it’s clear that Harriet has her work cut out for her. Luckily, Harriet, a barely closeted lesbian, is very much up to the task, whose adventures range from an impromptu lesson in fencing from crossdresser Brunhilda Struff, a first-time horseback ride in pursuit of a terrorist bomber, an evening at the Black Rabbit, the city’s preeminent queer nightclub (whose clientele also includes Matthew McCabe, Harriet’s colleague at the Prescott Agency), and an extended masquerade as Harry Dunn, a role Harriet was born to play.

A queer, female-forward dive into fact-based political corruption.