Smoke and Mirrors: A Miss Barnum Mystery

Evangeline “Evie” Barnum, the appealing heroine of this series launch from Daniels (Graveyard Shift and nine other Pepper Martin mysteries), works for her showman brother, Phineas T. Barnum, at his American Museum in Manhattan, which exhibits live animals, waxwork dummies, and fossils, along with such human oddities as Bess the Bearded Lady. One morning in 1842, Andrew Emerson, a friend from the Barnum family’s hometown of Bethel, Conn., shows up at the museum. He begs Evie to help him with a problem, but she brushes him off, unwilling to engage in what might lead to embarrassing questions about her abrupt departure from Bethel two years earlier. When Evie later finds Andrew lying dead with a curious head wound near the mermaid exhibit, suspicion falls on Jeffrey Hollister, the Lizard Man of Borneo. Evie’s desire to clear Jeffrey’s name soon leads her into a murky criminal underworld. Her intriguing backstory makes her particularly sensitive to inequities in the lives of women. Amusing and eye-opening historical details complement a mystery that’s appropriately melodramatic. [em]Agent: Gail Fortune, Talbot Fortune Agency. (Nov.) [/em]