skygiants: Nellie Bly walking a tightrope among the stars (bravely trotted)
Amy Stewart's Kopp Sisters series takes a series of sensationalist newspaper articles from WWI about the shocking existence of Constance Kopp, a female deputy sheriff in Hackensack, New Jersey, and fills them out with historical detail and human personalities.

They're quite good, and the third in the series, Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions, might be my favorite to date, although both title and description are (once again) misleading. Goodreads informs me that "the feisty, fiery Kopp sisters are back in another unforgettable romp by international bestseller Amy Stewart," which is not ... how I would describe ... a book which centers around a female law enforcement officer grappling with her responsibility to enforce the strict double standards that unjustly ruin the lives and futures of young women ...

Honestly of the books are really as action-adventure-y as the summaries would like to make them sound, but 'Miss Kopp's Midnight Confessions' has very little action at all -- in this case I would count this as a feature, not a bug. The book begin with two young women getting delivered to Constance's prison for immoral behavior: Edna, who went to work in a factory for the war effort, and whose mother called the cops because she didn't want her to leave; and Minnie, a teenager who also ran away from home to live! in sin! with a man!, and whose parents emphatically do not want her back.

It's fairly easy for Constance to help Edna have a fulfilling future, and nearly impossible for her to help Minnie. That's half the plot of the book. The other half involves the Littlest Kopp, Fleurette, who ALSO runs away from home with a traveling theater company, forcing Constance to deal with her own internalized double standards about what kind of rights to make mistakes she feels young women should have when it comes to her own household.

It's all very good stuff. It's not what I would call a 'romp', but hey, I'm not a publisher! I only have one big complaint, but it's a large-ish complaint which I will put under a spoiler cut )
skygiants: Nellie Bly walking a tightrope among the stars (bravely trotted)
The title of Amy Stewart's Girl Waits With Gun is rather (intentionally, I think) misleading - not only is it not actually particularly hijinks-y, but Our Heroine Constance Kopp is a grown adult woman in her mid-thirties, which is honestly one of the reasons the book stood out to me.

Based On A True Story, Girl Waits With Gun kicks off when stoic six-foot-tall Constance and her two sisters (Norma, congenitally disapproving adult pigeon-fancier; Fleurette, theatrical teen fashionista) have an unfortunate street encounter with a band of local toughs, who are practicing Reckless Driving. Constance attempts to Demand Compensation. Local Toughs Retaliate by setting up an increasing campaign of threats and harassment, specifically targeting Fleurette. Constance and her sisters switch their efforts towards attempting to get local law enforcement to take all this seriously enough to do anything about it, which is unsurprisingly as challenging in 1914 as today.

Meanwhile, all this excitement starts Constance off on a course of introspection and reinvention regarding the sisters' struggling finances, their deeply retired and isolated life - a course of action taken to protect a family secret decades before, and never altered - and the possibilities open for women in 1914 to find an existence that's both self-sufficient and satisfying. Some inkling of the outcome of all this can perhaps be gleaned from the fact that the second book of Constance's adventures is titled Lady Cop Makes Trouble.

Teen Girl Shakes Off Convention stories, while often enjoyable, are not particularly rare. Adult Woman Re-Evaluates Life And Makes More Satisfying Choices is a different subgenre and one I always appreciate on the occasions that I find it, especially when it revolves primarily around her relationship with other women.

The sisters do have one Law Enforcement Male Ally, Sheriff Heath. He is progressive and ethical and he and Constance clearly have kind of a pining mutual respect Thing going on, and also he is married to an unsympathetic woman who does not approve of his choices or enjoy the Mrs. Sheriff lifestyle at all. I made some faces about this in the first book. Lady Cop Makes Trouble starts to complicate this, and make it clear that Mrs. Heath has some legitimate reasons to be deeply unhappy and dissatisfied; I'm hoping this is a trend that continues in future books.

Profile

skygiants: Princess Tutu, facing darkness with a green light in the distance (Default)
skygiants

June 2025

S M T W T F S
123 45 67
891011121314
15161718192021
22232425262728
2930     

Syndicate

RSS Atom

Most Popular Tags

Style Credit

Expand Cut Tags

No cut tags
Page generated Jun. 15th, 2025 11:17 am
Powered by Dreamwidth Studios