It’s 1890. Railroads are being robbed regularly in the New Mexico Territory. Railroad men see it as the cost of doing business. Fred Harvey, owner of the Harvey Houses, doesn’t agree after a conductor is killed on a train. He hires a Pinkerton agent to go undercover in one of his restaurants. Clare Wright is hired as The Harvey Girl in Dana Stabenow’s fascinating historical mystery.

One month of training hardly prepares Clare for the long work days waiting on people in the restaurant at Montana Roja. Although she’s exhausted, she has to find time to get to know the other hostesses, learn her way around town, and search out men who might have been involved in the robberies. She also digs into the stories of the people who have come to make fortunes in the Wild West. She’s accompanied by two men, hired to investigate and watch over her, Bat Masterson and Tom Horn. But, Claire is the one undercover where she can listen to people, including the single women who signed on as hostesses for a contract covering at least six months.

When a second man, one of Clare’s primary suspects, is murdered in the same way as the train conductor, Clare knows the killer is close to home. As she explains her conclusions to Fred Harvey, she leaves a frustrated employer who is shocked that he placed his trust in the wrong people.

Stabenow’s historical research and story is an absorbing adventure involving women’s roles in 1890, as Pinkerton agents, waitresses and cooks. She skillfully includes characters such as Fred Harvey, Mark Twain, and Bat Masterson, and they slip into their roles in Clare’s story of her investigation and her past. It’s a story of the building of the west, and the people who built it. There’s humor along with the overshadowing crime, violence, and drunkenness. And, while one mystery is solved, Stabenow leaves room for a continuation of an unsolved mystery. There’s more adventure to come in this intriguing story of The Harvey Girl.

Dana Stabenow’s website is http://stabenow.com

The Harvey Girl by Dana Stabenow. Head of Zeus, 2026. 272p.

FTC Full Disclosure – Library book

If you’d like to see Dana Stabenow talk about The Harvey Girls, you can watch the video of her program at The Poisoned Pen.