Miss Kopp's midnight confessions

Constance Kopp is a deputy sheriff in Hackensack, and the young women arriving at her jail make her angry. They are held on vague charges: waywardness, incorrigibility, moral depravity. The year is 1916, and the law treats such girls as a problem to be locked away.

Edna Heustis is strong-willed and patriotic. She left home to work in a munitions factory, and nothing about her belongs in a cell. Minnie Davis is a sixteen-year-old runaway with few prospects and fewer friends. She faces public shaming and a transfer to a state-run reformatory.

Constance investigates on their behalf and defends them when nobody else will. She uses the authority of her badge for this, and sometimes goes beyond it.

The hardest test comes from home. Her sister Fleurette pushes Constance to look at her own views on how a young woman ought to behave, and the question follows her through every case.

The novel is the third in the Kopp Sisters series by Amy Stewart and draws on the true story of the Kopp sisters. It is set against World War I, and it reads as a lively historical novel with the light touch of a detective story.