Summary: First published in 1910, Orczy's female detective was the precursor of the lay sleuth who relies on brains rather than brawn. The book soon became very popular, with three editions appearing in the first year. As well as being one of the first novels to feature a female detective as the main character, Orczy's outstandingly successful police officer preceded her real life female counterparts by a decade.
Thoughts: This book was a little disappointing for me. I've read other works by Baroness Orczy before (namely the Scarlet Pimpernel) and adored them. I was excited to discover that she had a story of a female detective just as I was in the mood for some good detective fiction. Unfortunately, Lady Molly was a bit of a let down. I guessed the conclusion of most of the cases. Very little time was spent in showing off the Lady's actual talents and usefulness while too much time was spent comparing her with her male counterparts and lauding her for simply being female.
Now I realize that a female detective was a bit groundbreaking at the time this was written, but that should have been even more of a reason to make the mysteries intriguing and the sleuth actually talented. As it is, the story is told from the wide-eyed perspective of Lady Molly's maid who recounts several different cases with an abnormal amount of adoration and honor given to Lady Molly who is actually rather mean to the maid.
And everything ends on Molly's own personal story instead of a grand case which, though it did involve a murder, seemed to almost solve itself. It was kind of uninspiring.
Content: Blood, gore, and murder-mystery violence are mentioned. Most of the cases have mature events involved such as illegitimate children, affairs, and of course death. SPOILER One of the cases involves a man cross dressing END SPOILER.
Basically what you would expect from a collection of detective stories. All in all, an easy read but not one of the best. I highly recommend the Scarlet Pimpernel series before this one.
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