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.
Wow, I would love to read that book!
It was a library book, Carol. Really interesting.
Available on Amazon. Just finished it. Look.forward to next one.
Fascinating. This is so different from her other books, set in freezing Alaska.
Very interesting, Jeff. I really liked the main character and the setting.
I’ve read a number of her Alaska books and really enjoyed them. This sounds very good, too. I’ve heard of Harvey girls at the Harvey House restaurants; this book sounds like a fun way to use all that information.
It was fun, Kim. Dana says in the program that she really liked Fred Harvey after her research, and hope she isn’t disillusioned some day. She liked how he treated women.
This one’s definitely going on my wish list Lesa! Everything about it intrigues me. I’m so glad you mentioned this one.
I’d been waiting for this one to come out, Lindy. The subject intrigued me, a female Pinkerton agent undercover as a Harvey Girl. I was interested in the Harvey Girls as a subject.
I read and enjoyed this book. Funnily enough I also read another book about the Harvey Girls, The Harvey Girls by Juliette Fay published Aug of 2025. Several years ago I was in Santa Fe and saw an exhibit on Fred Harvey and his hotels. I guess the idea stuck in my mind so I took the chance to learn more.
I had that book, The Harvey Girls, at home at one time, Susan, and never read it. Did you see the exhibit, or stay at La Fonda? My very first Left Coast Crime conference was in Santa Fe at La Fonda, the Santa Fe Harvey House. According to La Fonda’s website, “Daggett Harvey, a Fred Harvey descendant, and Stephen Fried, author of Appetite for America: Fred Harvey and the Business of Civilizing the Wild West—One Meal at a Time spoke at La Fonda about how the company supported women and people of color in the workplace.”
Of course, there was a 1940s movie The Harvey Girls, with Judy Garland and a young Angela Lansbury. Jackie is a fan of it.
Oh, I bet I’d like it, too, Jeff.
This sounds great! I adore historical mysteries
I really enjoyed it, Ellen.