According to Wikipedia, Mary Roberts Rinehart was the American Agatha Christie. She certainly didn’t achieve Christie’s heights of fame but then again, who has? Agatha Christie famously disappeared for a couple of weeks in 1926, adding immensely to her mystique as a mystery writer. Rinehart did nothing so dramatic, but she was almost shot and stabbed by her longtime chef in 1947 and that same year went public about her battle with breast cancer, which was a pretty bold move for the times. She was also a trained nurse and a war correspondent on the front lines of World War I. She seems worth remembering for all that, if not for the long list of books she wrote. Her life sounds terrifying and it seems like she was a badass.
Many of her books are available on Project Gutenberg but it doesn’t look like Miss Pinkerton is among them. It’s actually the second (maybe third?) in a series of four books following Hilda Adams, professional nurse and secret assistant to the police. I picked this up in a used bookstore and though Miss Adams keeps referring to former cases I wasn’t sure whether that was referring to actual previous books or just a plot device. Miss Pinkerton (also called The Double Alibi) works as a standalone book but it’s neat to know there are really more stories about her.
Anyhow, it’s 1932 and Hilda Adams is a home care nurse. The police, especially Inspector Patton, sometimes arrange for her to snoop around and find clues while she’s nursing at at a suspect’s home, and this is what brings her to the elderly Miss Juliet Mitchell’s stately home. Her good for nothing nephew has just accidentally killed himself while cleaning his pistol. Or maybe he killed himself. Or maybe he was murdered and it was made to look like an accident or a suicide. Nurse Adams is helping Patton figure out what happened while she nurses Miss Juliet.
What follows is a guessing game of motives and opportunity. The elderly servants are hiding something, but what? Miss Juliet is hiding something, too. So is Paula, the dead nephew’s girlfriend. She’s sniffing around awfully hard for information. And what about Miss Juliet’s doctor, hoping Miss Juliet will leave him money in her will? And the family lawyer in charge of that will? What really happened is anybody’s guess as our heroine sneaks around looking for clues and talking to suspects, all while actually nursing Miss Juliet and secretly meeting with Inspector Patton to report.
It’s pulpy and superficial but it’s a fun mystery and Nurse Adams is pretty plucky and independent for the 1930s. It’s also fun to read mysteries from earlier eras where so many people don’t have phones or cars. It’s a whole different feel, you know? Also, it was a little weird to realize that Nurse Adams’s medical kit has reusable glass vials of pills and a hypodermic needle she just washes and reuses forever. Of course she does, the 1930s weren’t full of single use gloves and disposable needles. But that’s what I love about reading old stuff–I always find little tidbits I’d never considered.
Anyway, Rinehart was cool and probably worth trying if you like old-timey stuff. I don’t see the Miss Pinkerton series for free but Project Gutenberg has other mysteries she wrote, plus some of her non-fiction writing. Or you could cruise used book stores for pulp novels that haven’t yet crumbled to dust. You might get lucky and find the sequel, The Haunted Lady. But I’m hoping to find it first.
As always, you can follow us here or on Substack; embrace the darkness and read more books.
Darker Books 