Title: Petticoat
Detective (Undercover Ladies #1)
Author: Margaret Brownley
Pages: 318
Year: 2014
Publisher: Shiloh Run Press
Jennifer Layne is a Pinkerton
Detective who has been assigned a case that involves her working undercover in
a brothel. Jennifer is a young, pretty,
Christian lady so this assignment is especially difficult as she is required to
keep her personal beliefs to herself or she will blow her cover. She is on the trail of a bandit who has robbed
several banks and in his last robbery killed a guard. Some of the money from the most recent bank
job was found on the body of Dave Colton.
Also one of the girls in the brothel deposited a large sum in her account
with some of the marked money from the bank robbery. Tom Colton, Dave’s brother, has come to town
to clear his brother’s name and find his murderer. Dave had indicated he was going to marry
Rose, one of the working girls at the local brothel, but before Tom can find
the girl she is killed. Tom meets
Jennifer at the brothel, hires her to spy for him and they work together to try
to solve the case and bring a criminal to justice.
While there isn’t much tension or
action in the story, there are some good life lessons put forth. One of those lessons is to not judge people by
their appearance. The author did a very
good job of depicting the life of a shunned person, the humiliation felt, the
despair and hopelessness experienced, and the most violent offenders or
perpetrators of inducing these feelings in the story were supposed Christians! There were a few Christians in the story who
realized their actions were not hand-in-hand with their words and began to draw
alongside what most in the community might think of as “undesirables”. There were a couple of humorous scenes as
well. The story just didn’t have enough strength to grab my attention and keep me fully
engaged. There is another book in the
series due to be released this summer, and I plan on reading that book in hopes
of more action.
My rating is 3 stars.
Disclosure of Material Connection: The opinions shared in this review are solely
my responsibility. Other reviews can be
read at http://seekingwithallyurheart.blogspot.com/. Also follow me on Twitter @lcjohnson1988,
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