Pinkerton’s Secret

Former screenwriter Lerner’s debut creatively reanimates Allan Pinkerton, founder of the country’s first detective agency. Pinkerton narrates his adventuresome life and times, beginning in 1856 Chicago, as his Pinkerton National Detective Agency recruits a few good (male) operatives. When attractive, young Kate Warne applies for the job, she unknowingly puts female detectives into the history books. Tentatively at first (due to her “femaleness”), Pinkerton slowly warms to Kate and her sleuthing acumen, particularly after she helps crack a major case and goes on to assist in thwarting a Maryland secessionist plot. As the pair’s success grows, so does a romance, which gets messy since Pinkerton is already married. Meanwhile, Pinkerton’s agency foils an assassination attempt on Abraham Lincoln, and Pinkerton establishes the nation’s first secret service unit (in service to the Union Army), which takes on increasingly dangerous exploits. Lerner highlights Pinkerton’s progressive politics and distinctive personal history with uncanny accuracy throughout this sharp-witted, romantic channeling of America’s prototype investigative innovator. (Mar.)