More magic

The magic Amy Stewart instilled in Girl Waits with Gun, the first novel in her Kopp Sisters series, remains in her second, Lady Cop Makes Trouble (2016). Oh, maybe it’s not quite the same magic. Her characters, so original and surprising in the first outing, are now familiar, and the plot lacks complexity. Even so, the second novel entertains from beginning to end.

Constance Kopp is now working for Sheriff Heath, but without a badge. The sheriff questions whether he is legally permitted to hire a female deputy in New Jersey in 1915. So Constance is made jail matron, in charge of female prisoners. When she is called to assist with a hospitalized male prisoner because she speaks German, she sees it as a break. Instead it is the prisoner, the Rev. Dr. Herman Albert von Matthesius, who gets a break, or rather makes a break. And he escapes while Constance is supposed to be watching him but briefly leaves his hospital room.

Now with her job on the line (as well as the sheriff's), not to mention any chance she might have of ever becoming a deputy, Constance is determined to track down Matthesius herself, never mind that the sheriff has ordered her back to the jail. So most of the novel involves her disobeying direct orders while staying a step ahead of the sheriff and his deputies in tracking down the escapee.

There are no murders here, although there is a killing in a subplot, and we are never entirely sure what Matthesius is accused of doing. (The novel is based loosely on actual events, and the crimes of the real Matthesius are unclear in the historical record.) Still there is plenty of action and plenty of suspense. Supporting characters — the sheriff’s unhappy wife, Constance’s older sister, Norma, with her passion for homing pigeons, and the theatrical younger sister, Fleurette (actually Constance’s daughter, although Fleurette doesn’t know it) -- fill out the story without slowing it down.