The Experiences of Loveday Brooke, Lady Detective

Loveday Brooke is the first female detective created by a woman writer. Catherine Louisa Pirkis published stories about this smart, spirited sleuth in the 1880s, and they were collected into this anthology in 1894. In these tales, Loveday takes on cases involving wayward nuns, missing debutantes, a mysterious princess, and a ghost who resembles Napoleon, among other strange phenomena. Throughout, she is insightful, professional, and simply more intelligent than anyone else around her, indicating that Loveday and Pirkis were both ahead of their time. This collection includes seven stories: “The Black Bag Left on a Doorstep,” “The Murder at Troyte’s Hill,” “The Redhill Sisterhood,” “A Princess’ Vengeance,” “Drawn Daggers,” “The Ghost of Fountain Lane,” and “Missing.”