A Front Page Affair: A Kitty Weeks Mystery by Radha Vatsal

Hello historical fiction/gentle mystery with a strong female heroine fans!  I’ve just discovered the first book in what I’m told will be a new mystery series, originally published in the winter of 2016.  A Front Page Affair is set in the early 1900s just after the sinking of the Lusitania and as the United States sits on the brink of World War I.

Kitty Weeks lives with her widowed father in New York City.  Though she easily belongs with other 20 something society girls, she shies away from that life to take a job writing for the Ladies Page of the Sentinel.  Kitty aims to become a journalist and cover news that matters more, but the only jobs open to women in 1915 were on the Ladies Page. On assignment at a fete, she comes upon a murder, and can’t help but try to solve it.  Mix in some suspicion about her father’s business dealings prompted by visits from the Secret Service, and the emerging Woman’s Suffrage Movement, and you have a novel.

Yes, she sounds a little like my childhood fave:  Nancy Drew.  I recently saw an article on the Book Riot blog claiming Nancy can’t be modernized successfully; she only works in her era. The charm of A Front Page Affair is how well Kitty works in her era, and how easy it is to believe her setting and plot.  The ending may be a tiny bit predictable, or at least not much of a surprise, but the getting there is divine.  I look forward to the next time Kitty Weeks graces the pages of the book in my hands!