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The True Story of New York City's Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 Missing Girl Case That Captivated a Nation
by Brad Ricca
In the literary tradition of In Cold Blood and The Devil in the White City, Brad Ricca's Mrs. Sherlock Holmes is a true crime tale told in spine-tingling fashion.
Mrs. Sherlock Holmes tells the incredible true life story of Mrs. Grace Humiston, the New York lawyer and detective who solved the famous cold case of Ruth Cruger, an 18-year-old girl who disappeared in 1917. Grace was an amazing lawyer and traveling detective during a time when no women were practicing these professions. She focused on solving cases no one else wanted and advocating for innocents. Grace became the first female U.S. District Attorney and made ground-breaking investigations into modern slavery.
One of Grace's greatest accomplishments was solving the Cruger case after following a trail of corruption that lead from New York to Italy. Her work changed how the country viewed the problem of missing girls. But the victory came with a price when she learned all too well what happens when one woman upstages the entire NYPD.
This story is about a woman whose work was so impressive that the papers gave her the nickname of fiction's greatest sleuth. With important repercussions in the present about kidnapping, the role of the media, and the truth of crime stories, the great mystery of the book – and its haunting twist ending – is how one woman can become so famous only to disappear completely.
"Starred Review. Rapid, compelling storytelling informed by rigorous research and enlivened by fecund imagination." - Kirkus
"Ricca (Super Boys) provides a fascinating account of Grace Humiston, a pioneering attorney in the early 20th century, dubbed "Mrs . Sherlock Holmes " by the press for her investigative prowess...Her incredible life story, superbly portrayed by Ricca, is more proof that truth is stranger than fiction." - Publishers Weekly
"Ricca lays out this fascinating whodunit with a novelist's skill, making Mrs. Sherlock Holmes a suspenseful winner." - Cathy Scott, award-winning journalist and Los Angeles Times bestselling author of Murder of a Mafia Daughter and The Killing of Tupac Shakur
"Brad Ricca's spellbinding nonfiction account of the disappearance and murder of a young woman ranks right up there with the most absorbing mystery novels ... A first-rate story." - Sandra Dallas, New York Times Bestselling author of The Last Midwife
This information about Mrs. Sherlock Holmes was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Brad Ricca is the author of Super Boys: The Amazing Adventures of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster--the Creators of Superman, winner of the Ohioana Book Award for Nonfiction and the Cleveland Arts Prize for Literature. His first book of poetry, American Mastodon, won the St. Lawrence Book Award. His documentary Last Son won a Silver Ace Award at the Las Vegas International Film Festival. He has been a contributing expert for the New York Daily News, TheWall Street Journal, the BBC, the AV Club, and All Things Considered. He is a SAGES Fellow at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, where he was born and now lives with his family.
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