Devil by the Tail

It's 1867 and Chicago is a boomtown. Quinn Sinclair, the 22-year-old widow of a Union soldier, has been cheated out of her share of her husband's estate by her Irish-hating in-laws. She's had some training in the Female Bureau of the Pinkerton Detective Agency and wants to start her own detective agency. Gabe Garnick, an ex-Confederate POW with no family to return home to, joins Quinn to form the Garnick & Paschal Detective Agency. She uses the name Mrs. Paschal professionally because "nice women" don't work outside the home, let alone rub shoulders with criminals. If the landlady of her respectable boarding house were to find out she carries a derringer and investigates murders, Quinn would be evicted.

The Garnick & Paschal agency gets two cases on the same day - one to help a man prove he didn't kill his wife, another to help an attorney establish reasonable doubt that his client killed her ex-lover's new bride. As the detectives dig deeper, they unearth facts that tie the cases together in disturbing ways. The investigation embroils them in the affairs of colorful bawdyhouse madams, corrupt politicians, yellow-press reporters, notorious gamblers, unscrupulous lawyers, and at least one vicious murderer. Despite all the danger, an unlikely romance begins to evolve between Quinn and Garnick.

Devil by the Tail is a story about feminism before the word was invented; post-traumatic-stress syndrome before it had a name; and Chicago before it was safe to drink the water without choking on a fishbone or getting cholera.

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