Louisa and the Missing Heiress

April 25, 2011
Originally published in 2004 and set in 1854 Boston, Maclean's well-crafted first Louisa May Alcott Mystery finds the 22-year-old budding author teaching children in her home while writing lurid, "blood-and-thunder" stories in her attic. Louisa, who has little interest in the courting rituals so important to her friends and other young women, is content to help her tireless mother around the house, listen to her philosopher father's "radical" ideas, and tend to the unfortunate at the Charles Street Home for Unwed Girls. Louisa's routine is disrupted by the disappearance of her childhood friend, heiress Dorothy "Dot" Brownly Wortham, who's recently returned from an extended honeymoon and is later found floating in Boston Harbor. When the police arrest Dot's husband, rakish Preston Wortham, as the sole suspect in his wife's death, feisty Louisa launches her own covert investigation to prove Preston innocent. Well-developed characters complement the authentic period setting.