Crime
Watch
By
Dick Adler
Chicago
Tribune
October
12, 2003
Is
there anything
better than
a smart, tough
woman solving
crimes while
moving through
a freshly
researched
portion of
our history?
Margaret Lawrence's
books about
post-Revolutionary
War Maine
midwife Hannah
Trevor ("Hearts
and Bones,"
"Blood
Red Roses")
come to mind,
as do Dianne
Day's stories
("Emperor
Norton's Ghost,"
"Beacon
Street Mourning")
of Fremont
Jones, a young
woman from
Boston who
arrives in
San Francisco
just before
the 1905 earthquake
and begins
a career as
a detective.
Miriam Grace
Monfredo,
who writes
a splendid
series about
librarian
Glynis Tryon
("Through
a Gold Eagle")
that begins
just before
the Civil
War in upstate
New York,
is another
prime example.
It's
no stretch
at all to
place Ann
Parker's Inez
Stannert on
this list.
Like the other
women in the
group, she
is of her
time--a handsome,
obviously
educated wife
supporting
and playing
second fiddle
to a flashier
gambler husband
in 1879 Colorado--and
a link to
the future.
When her husband
disappears,
Stannert proves
she can overcome
that and other
tragedies
to triumph
in a male
world by taking
over the running
of their saloon
and helping
to clear up
several murders,
scams and
distressing
puzzles.
Parker
is a science
writer with
a degree in
literature
and the ability
to sum up
in a few sharp
sentences
the tawdry
power of a
frontier boomtown
like Leadville,
where a sudden
surge in silver
could burnish
everyone's
dreams. Like
the wonderful
black-and-white
photograph
of historic
Leadville
on its cover
(the credit
for which
admits, "Image
altered"),
her first
novel, which
won a regional
writing contest
last year,
combines a
kind of gritty
grandeur with
a knowing
wisdom about
the way the
present shapes
our perceptions
of the past.
