Mrs. Sherlock Holmes: The True Story of New York City's Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 Missing Girl Case That Captivated a Nation

Acclaimed for solving the murder of teenager Ruth Cruger in 1917, well-born New York City attorney Grace Humiston was already making headlines. She established the People's Law Firm in 1905 to help the city's poor, helped to overturn death sentences, challenged deportations, and was appointed as the first female U.S. District Attorney for her exposé of "peonage" schemes enslaving primarily immigrant laborers for mining, turpentine, and lumber operations in the South. Not a conventional biography, Ricca's (Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel & Joe Shuster—the Creators of Superman) well-documented, engrossing time capsule of early 20th-century New York depicts the era's prejudices and institutionalized injustices through Humiston's passionate advocacy for marginalized residents, among them missing women whose disappearances police frequently presumed to be elopements rather than potential abductions meriting investigation. Underscoring the pathos of Humiston's cases, David Bendena's clear narration lends subtle drama when appropriate, with vocal inflections and foreign accents distinguishing characters' social footing: empowered or vulnerable.