North Star Conspiracy - Hardcover

Miriam Grace Monfredo, a former librarian and a historian, lives in Rochester, New York. This is the seventh Seneca Falls Mystery. A previous Seneca Falls Mystery, The Stalking-Horse, was chosen by the Voice of Youth Advocacy as one of 1998’s best adult mysteries for young adults and received a “best” review in Library Journal’s young adult section.

Unmarried (by choice) librarian Glynis Tryon (Seneca Falls Inheritance, 1992) learns firsthand of the iniquities of slavery when her boardinghouse landlady's son Niles returns to their western New York home with Kiri--a beautiful mulatto slave he helped escape from a Virginia plantation. A slave-catcher is on their trail, and though Glynis manages to get Kiri to her sister's house in Rochester, a stop on the Underground Railroad, Niles is captured and returned to Virginia to stand trial. In Richmond to help Niles's lawyer, Glynis learns that three recent murders back home all tie in with Kiri--and with the murder of her fleeing family 13 years before by a villainous overseer, now living up north under another identity. With help from Constable Sundown and Cullen Stuart, a Pinkerton detective, Glynis and Kiri bait a trap for the villain and spring it during the debut performance of Macbeth at Seneca Falls's just-opened theater. Stimulating fare (despite a subplot or two too many) that effectively parallels the powerlessness of slaves and women--the disenfranchised--building to a dramatic courtroom sequence. Sojourner Truth, Matthew Brady, et al., appear in memorable cameos. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.