Miss Maitland, Private Secretary

In 1917, when female detectives were still a novelty, Molly Morgenthau Babbitts takes on a case that will test her wits against old money and older secrets. Posing as a governess in the gilded world of the Janney family, she arrives at their Long Island estate to investigate a straightforward robbery. But the case curdles into something far darker when a second crime rocks the household, and Molly finds herself unraveling a tangle of lies buried beneath the family's polished surface. At the center of the mystery stands Esther Maitland: the Janneys' private secretary, a woman of sharp competence and unfathomable stillness. Everyone trusts her. Everyone insists she's above suspicion. But Molly's instincts, honed by years of reading people who have everything to hide, whisper otherwise. What is Maitland hiding behind that careful composure? And which of the privileged souls around her have more to lose than money? Bonner writes with wry precision, skewering the assumptions of class while delivering a puzzle that genuinely rewards attention. This is early feminist detective fiction at its most satisfying: a woman outsmarting a house full of suspects who never expected to be outsmarted at all.