Girl Waits With Gun

What a fabulous story.  Maybe it is because the novel is based on a true crime that happened in New Jersey, my home state.  But more possibly it is just that Amy Stewart has done a terrific job presenting the story with enough suspenseful build up and just the right amount of tender caring developing the characters that the reader does not want to stop reading until the bad guy is behind bars and the justice is served.

It is November 1914 and the latest headline in the Philadelphia Sun  reads, "Oh, for a Chance to Shoot at Nasty Prowlers".  This article and others ran in papers across New Jersey, including my local paper growing up, the Bergen County Evening Record, which in a similar format continues to run today in 2016.  Author Amy Stewart takes the simple facts of the case of the Kopp sisters vs. Henry Kaufman and creates a well developed story that fleshes out the major players in the case and adds fictional people and places to build a story that could really have happened in Bergen County NJ at that time in history.  Stewart uses the silk mill industry of NJ to create a sinister character in Henry Kaufman, who has run the horse and buggy with the Kopp sisters driving off the road with his new motor car.  The reader can use their imagination to be there on the streets of Paterson and along the country dirt roads out to Wycoff and see the three young ladies living on a farm staying out of society and being harassed by the likes of Henry Kaufman and his rough gangster-like friends.  Though the sisters are living on the outskirts of Wycoff , hiding an old family secret, this interaction with Kaufman creates some drama and excitement in their lives which thrills the youngest sister, Fleurette.

When Constance Kopp decides that she will not take any harassment sitting down, she joins forces with the local police chief to catch the gangsters in the act of bribery and to find a young factory worker's abducted child.  This is a colorful story, narrated by the eldest sister Constance, who finds her calling as a sleuth and champion of the weak.  Using salacious and sensational newspaper headlines from the time period, Stewart creates a very believable storyline to fit the title, from the Philadelphia Sun, "Girl, Armed, Waits for Black Handers on Street Corner", November 23, 1914.