The Counterfeit Wife: A Revolutionary War Mystery
Following on her award-nominated debut, The Turncoat’s Wife, this is volume two of Becker’s Revolutionary War Mysteries series. The setting is Philadelphia, the summer of 1780, in the midst of the War for American Independence. Our heroine is Becca, the young, blue-eyed, Benjamin-Franklin-quoting widow Rebecca Parcell. She has been enlisted by General George Washington for a secret mission to track down the traitors who are flooding Philadelphia with counterfeit paper money.
Becca is paired with her spying partner, Daniel Alloway. Maimed earlier in the war while imprisoned on the infamous prison ship moored in New York Harbor, the Jersey, Alloway’s former life as a colonial printer serves the pair well in this case. The book’s fictional characters interact with several historical ones. Along with Washington are Sally Franklin Bache (1743-1808), Benjamin Franklin’s politically active daughter, and English-born Esther de Berdt Reed (1746-80), author of Sentiments of an American Woman (1780) and an insistent fundraiser for the Continental Army. Reed founded the Ladies Association of Philadelphia, with which Becca becomes involved. Others making cameo appearances include Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush (1745-1813) and founding mother Martha Washington (1731-1802).
The characters roam 18th-century Philadelphia’s streets and visit famous locations like City Tavern, Christ Church, Walnut Street Prison, and the Pennsylvania State House (Independence Hall). The plot is believable in other respects too, as the British did in fact flood the American market with counterfeit paper money in an effort to disrupt the colonial economy with rising food prices and runaway inflation while soiling America’s fiscal reputation in the world. This is a solid and amusing mystery with many scattered allusions to 18th-century authors and books, all delivered with sharp prose in short, smoothly flowing chapters. Those seeking entertainment in fiction with an American Revolution bent will not be disappointed.