Miss Kopp Just Won’t Quit (Kopp Sisters Novel)

Written by Amy Stewart
Review by Valerie Adolph

Miss Constance Kopp is a deputy sheriff in Hackensack, New Jersey, and rather a novelty in 1916. She chases down male and female criminals, sometimes sleeps in jail and finds satisfaction in understanding the lives of so-called criminal women. She is angered when she arrives to take a female lunatic, Mrs. Kayser, to the asylum – only to find her a pleasant housewife, clearly not insane. But her husband and a doctor have committed her. The law says she must be delivered to Morris Plains asylum. The reason? She has ‘a case of nerves’.

Constance Kopp asks a lawyer to fight for Mrs. Kayser’s release. Meanwhile elections are taking place, and it looks as if Miss Kopp will be losing her supportive sheriff and getting a highly unsympathetic new boss who hates the idea of a woman deputy sheriff.

This is a well-told tale that keeps the reader enthralled. The bonus is its basis on very thorough research and much historical truth. The difficult life of women back then is laid bare. And there is no info dump. It’s all story. Delicious story.