Violet was a 17-year-old high-society debutante who led a double life as a sleuth, working for an unnamed detective agency to discreetly ferret out solutions to mysteries that could not be trusted to the police. The short stories in this collection give us a glimpse into New York society, filled with musicales and teas and ballgowns, but neither the tales nor Violet are light-hearted and fluffy.
Happy endings aren't guaranteed, and we're often left with a sense of melancholy. Some of the stories are even a bit macabre. But over a century later, the well-plotted, legally-accurate yarns still satisfy one's desire for solid resolutions to seemingly insoluble mysteries.
