The Lady Cop Makes Trouble by Amy Stewart

This delightful second Kopp sisters novel gives us another peek into the historically rooted adventures of Constance, Norma and Fluerette Kopp.  In Girl Waits With a Gun, the women took their first steps outside of their country home and into the adventure, and danger, of a changing world.  Now, in The Lady Cop Makes Trouble, the women are determined to more fully engage in their chosen journey and each of them finds challenges great and small.

Constance, the main Kopp sister, has been accepted by the Sheriff of Bergen County as equal to the task of law enforcement and he has appointed her as one of the nation’s first female deputies.  Constance finds herself a useful (and paid!) member of the sheriff’s department.  Unfortunately, no adventure is ever smooth.  Soon, an inmate escapes and Constance is blamed.  Her dream of being a policewomen are placed in peril.

I love this character.  Demoted and ashamed she could have just accepted a new position or gone back to the farm.  Does she?  Hell no.  She has had a taste of the job she is destined to have and she is determined to win it back.

Constance is described in a variety of ways though the first and second book.  Since she is a real person there are even photographs of her.  But, for me, her actions paint the best picture of all.  She kicks down doors, wrestles men to the ground and shoots her gun.  She is smart and thorough.  Constance stands quietly in the face of men and women who do not think she belongs on the force.  She all but goes door to door righting wrongs.  I love Constance.

Norma is a hard to crack and her obsession with carrier pigeons is…unusual.  Fluerette is determined to build her life on a stage.  These two sisters take a backseat in this installment but, and I say this with great hope, we will hear more from them very soon.

Historical fiction is one of my favorite genres.  Sometimes an author creates a whole fictional world around a single fact, a unique person or one event.  What Amy Stewart does that I absolutely adore is transport the reader into the past through intricate details like fabric samples, changes in transportation, social and economic shifts and some fabulous ladies.  She freely admits which things she invents for the sake of the story and which are absolutely true.  This book, like the last, almost feels like listening to a very old person tell a story they have told 100 times before.  You know that things are embellished or perhaps not entirely historically accurate.  But you also know that Constance, Norma and Fluerette are real.  That is what makes the Kopp Sisters stories so very enjoyable.