To Slip the Bonds of Earth (A Katharine Wright Mystery)
Everyone knows about the Wright Brothers who pioneered flight, but Amanda Flower’s latest historical mystery brings to life their hidden-from-history sister—real-life high school teacher Katharine Wright. An Oberlin College graduate, Katharine takes her career teaching classical languages seriously, and she’s equally earnest about her responsibility to look after her widowed father and bachelor brothers in their Dayton home.
As the novel opens in December 1903, Orville and Wilbur return to Ohio from Kitty Hawk, triumphant in flight but not lauded in their hometown. At a local Christmas party attended by Katharine and Orville, ominous events unfold that appear to be connected—Orville’s engineering drawings are mislaid (or stolen?) and a prominent citizen is murdered, possibly by one of Katharine’s students. It falls to Katharine both to solve the murder and locate the lost papers before older brother Wilbur finds out because, as introverted Orville puts it, “You’re better with people… If I go about asking questions, it will appear odd.”
Flower’s signature attention to period detail and extensive research are on full display here, as she paints a vivid picture of gender and class differences in turn-of-the-century Dayton. The story gets off to a leisurely start, with the murder occurring a fourth of the way in, but the pace picks up when the investigation takes off. With her smarts and plucky nature, Katharine is a good choice for sleuth. But ironically, as the star of her own novel, she’s still overshadowed by her famous brothers, whose invention lies at the heart of the plot; even the title references their achievement, not hers.
