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    Mrs. Sherlock Holmes: The True Story of New York City's Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 Missing Girl Case That Captivated a Nation
    Unavailable
    Mrs. Sherlock Holmes: The True Story of New York City's Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 Missing Girl Case That Captivated a Nation
    Unavailable
    Mrs. Sherlock Holmes: The True Story of New York City's Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 Missing Girl Case That Captivated a Nation
    Audiobook12 hours

    Mrs. Sherlock Holmes: The True Story of New York City's Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 Missing Girl Case That Captivated a Nation

    Written by Brad Ricca

    Narrated by David Bendena

    3.5/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    Mrs. Grace Humiston was an amazing lawyer and a traveling detective during a time when no women were practicing those professions. She focused on solving cases no one else wanted and advocating for innocents. The first female U.S. District Attorney, she made groundbreaking investigations into modern-day slavery, and the papers gave her the nickname of fiction's famous sleuth.

    One of her greatest accomplishments was solving the cold case of a missing eighteen-year-old girl, Ruth Cruger. Her work changed how the country viewed the problem of missing girls, but it came with a price: she learned all too well what happens when one woman upstages the entire NYPD.

    In the literary tradition of In Cold Blood and The Devil in the White City, this true-crime tale is told in spine-tingling fashion and has important repercussions concerning kidnapping, the role of the media, and the truth of crime stories. But the great mystery of this book—and its haunting twist ending—is how one woman became so famous only to disappear.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherDreamscape Media Audio
    Release dateJun 5, 2018
    ISBN9781974905027
    Unavailable
    Mrs. Sherlock Holmes: The True Story of New York City's Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 Missing Girl Case That Captivated a Nation
    Author

    Brad Ricca

    BRAD RICCA earned his Ph.D. in English from Case Western Reserve University where he currently teaches. The author of Super Boys, he has spoken on comics at various schools and museums, and he has been interviewed about comics topics by The New York Daily News, The Wall Street Journal, and All Things Considered on NPR. His film Last Son won a 2010 Silver Ace Award at the Las Vegas International Film Festival. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

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    Reviews for Mrs. Sherlock Holmes

    3.5/5

    93 ratings23 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Although at times this was difficult to follow, I'm glad I read about this amazing woman.
    • 3/5
      I did enjoy learning about Grace Humiston, whom I had never heard of before, and the case of the missing girl was interesting, but I did get bogged down in some of the details. I wish there had been more about Grace herself rather than about different cases, some of which were discussed in more detail than I cared to read. I was inspired to research on my own, and I always appreciate a book that encourages me to do dig deeper.
    • 4/5
      I enjoyed learning about Grace Humiston, a lawyer and detective in New York who was particularly adept at following the facts and uncovering the actual criminals in a variety of situations. The book focuses primarily upon the case of the missing Cruger girl in 1917, but also involves cases of peonage, human trafficking and other crimes against people without means. Clearly she was a crusader and a feminist before women had the right to vote. A bit uneven at times; but deeply resourced and noted.
    • 3/5
      I've seen a few comments on this book that talk about it flowing like a novel but really it doesn't, it's interesting but I'm not sure where the author was going with the story, it's somewhat a biography of Grace Humiston and somewhat the story of the disappearance of an eighteen year-old girl called Ruth Cruger and the strange investigation of that coupled with a rumour of white slavery and a suspect who absconds to another country.I didn't really feel that I really got to know any of the characters but it was interesting. I think it was the subject matter that made it interesting, not the writing.
    • 3/5
      The woman in the title is Grace Humiston, a New-York-City lawyer/detective in the early part of the 20th Century. Although the book centers on her handling of the case of teen-aged Ruth Crager, the book meanders in and out of other cases both before and after. I would have preferred that the other cases remained relegated to footnotes and the Crager case be center stage throughout. Although Grace was a very interesting person, the book itself was – to me – less than satisfactory. It could have benefited greatly from the time and attention of a good editor. Clarity, conciseness and cohesiveness were in short supply. And, although readers will learn a lot of facts about the Mrs. Humiston and her cases, they will not really know anything about her as a person.
    • 4/5
      This is the true story of Mary Grace Quackenbos Humiston the first female Special Assistant United States Attorney. She graduated law school when women did not generally attend and set about helping the impoverished especially the immigrants in her community get a fair shake from the law. Her most famous case was the disappearance of Ruth Cruger in 1917. Police searched the basement of Alfredo Cocchi and found nothing which caused the case to grow cold. When Grace found a way to search the basement again and Ruth's body was discovered she made enemies of the embarrassed police force. This was an interesting look at a remarkable woman who was ahead of her time. She was able to get the innocent freed during a time when the poor could not get justice. The book does a good job of presenting the context for the time in which Grace lived. The book did drag in a few places especially towards Grace's later years. Overall however I enjoyed reading about some of Grace's more notable exploits. This book will be enjoyed by anyone who is a fan of history and true crime.
    • 3/5
      Good story, interesting real life female detective. Tells of her struggles due to the times she lived in. Drags in the middle though.
    • 4/5
      I knew I had to have this book the moment I heard about it, and reading it definitely lived up to my expectations. Ricca tells the true tale of a woman detective who took on the case of a missing girl, and ended up taking on her city as well. Ricca also explores the all-important question of how such an important, influential woman could be so little-known nowadays.This book is fascinating from a true crime viewpoint, but also in the ways it explores the societal and cultural norms of the time. I highly recommend this read.
    • 4/5
      To that list of creative historian/biographers that includes Erik Larson, Candice Millard and, way back when, Truman Capote, you can add the name Brad Ricca, whose recent “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes” proves that the earlier “Super Boys” was no fluke.By the use of the word creative I mean to suggest that these writers write history and biography in the manner of novelists. In the second chapter of Ricca's newer book, for example, we read "Twenty-year-old Christina wiped away the steam and scraped at the spidery frost on the window." Well, 100 years later, how do we know Christina wiped away steam and scraped frost from the window. Perhaps because we know it was a frigid February day in New York City and that is what one would do in order to look out a window, and looking out a window is what one might do if one's sister is very late coming home.Ricca gives pages and pages of notes and references to justify such sentences as this. A reader feels confident that if this isn't exactly what happened, it must be close to what happened.The real problem with Ricca's book about a female lawyer who a century ago won brief fame for her detective skills is that while he may tell the story as if it were a novel, the story itself doesn't quite cooperate. Most people's lives don't have plots, as I mentioned in a blog post a few weeks ago ("Story vs. plot," June 8, 2018). Grace Humiston makes quite a splash, then fades into relative obscurity. The book ends with more whimper than bang, but the first couple hundred pages make excellent reading.The case that occupies most of the book involves a young woman, Christina's sister Ruth Cruger, who never returns home from ice skating. Her father insists his daughter is a good girl who would never run away from home. The police think otherwise, but they do search a motorcycle shop owned by Alfredo Cocchi where Ruth is believed to have stopped. No evidence is found, yet later Cocchi himself disappears and turns up in Italy, leaving his wife behind in New York.Henry Cruger, the girl's father, hires Grace Humiston to investigate. She becomes convinced that Ruth is dead and that Cocchi is involved. The body must be in the basement of his workshop, which Mrs. Cocchi guards zealously. Eventually Hunmiston's team of investigators do find the body exactly where she knew it would be.Cocchi makes two confessions, one that he killed Ruth to stop her screaming when he sexually assaulted her and a second that his wife killed her. Yet he is never returned to New York to stand trial. Various police officers are held accountable, however, both for failing to find the body when they searched the shop and for showing Cocchi favoritism because he often worked on their motorcycles and was a friend of theirs. This turned the police against Humiston.Other reversals follow, and her reputation suffers. She remains a champion of missing girls, but with diminishing success. Ricca tells the story well, much like a novel, but because it is true, it cannot end like one.
    • 3/5
      This started strong, but often went off the rails, and was unfocused, and never really ended chapters or story arcs with strong conclusions. Based on the ending I wonder if it is because there often weren't strong conclusions to be found, given the lack of information we have on the subject. But I'd prefer to have that addressed head-on in the text.I also don't know what Arthur Conan Doyle, in the intro, had to do with anything. And while I know authors can't always help what title their book is given, I hate the title.
    • 4/5
      Although this wound out being more about the murder than the titular detective, I enjoyed this very much: I always enjoy a peek into the lives of prominent women of a hundred years ago, when most of us imagine that prominent women were only wives and widows.
    • 3/5
      Mary Grace Quackenbos Humiston (née Winterton) was the first female United States Attorney and known for a short time as 'Mrs. Sherlock Holmes'. A graduate of the Law School of New York University, she was a leader in exposing peonage (any form of unfree labour or wage labor in which a laborer has little control over employment conditions) in the American South. In 1905 she founded the People's Law Firm which focused on the cases of the working poor and immigrants. She solved the cold case of Ruth Cruger who disappeared in New York in 1917.The subject-matter itself promised to be an interesting read, but I was disappointed by this story as it jumped around time-wise all over the place and was full of rambling, tedious detail with no inclusion of maps or photographs. I feel the author is a good researcher, but should have put that research into the hands of a good writer. I hope someone else will have a go at rewriting what has the potential to be an absorbing story.
    • 3/5
      This non-fiction account of the life of Mrs. Grace Humiston and the most famous of her cases, the disappearance of Ruth Cruger, straddles the line between biography and true crime. Told in journalistic style (read: there are prolific end notes but no in-text markers for them), the style may be a bit disjointed for some readers as almost the first half of the book alternates between detailing the Ruth Cruger disappearance case prior to Humiston's involvement with background on Humiston's journey from divorcee to lawyer to part-time detective. That warning aside, this is a thoroughly absorbing recounting of an historic crime and a fascinating insight into the woman who refused to accept the police's view on the case. Dwelling on themes that continue to be relevant in contemporary society, this book is a fascinating read for history and true crime fans.
    • 4/5
      Our Nonfiction, September book club book. Somewhat disorganized, but still an excellent book. Not sure how one could have told this story in a different way. The work that Grace Humiston, a lawyer and detective, did for the women, poor people and immigrants was difficult and praiseworthy, but she was not appreciated in the end. I had never heard of Sunnyside farm in Arkansas where she worked on the case of Italian immigrants, victims of peonage. The story of Ruth Croger the young skater who went missing and was found dead will never be completely understood, but Grace made every effort she could. Made us aware (yet again) of the power of others to complicate and block investigations.
    • 3/5
      Given this book's topic - narrative nonfiction about a female lawyer/detective practicing law/investigating crimes in early 20th century New York - it should have been a home-run for me. But it just never came together. I've only got about 50 pages left, but the last 100 or so pages have felt like kind of a slog. The writing seems a bit choppy - like there will be a sentence in the middle of the paragraph that doesn't have anything to do with the rest of it. The story also hops around a lot, which typically doesn't bother me if it's well done, but in this case it came off as more half-baked than anything. On the whole, I just find myself disappointed in this one.
    • 5/5
      Grace Winterton Humiston was born in Greenwich Village, New York on September 17, 1869. While she was practicing law at the turn of the century she would be only one of a thousand female lawyers in the United States. She was appointed the first female U.S. district attorney in history and the first female consulting detective to the New York Police Department. She dressed all in black with a veil and her motto was "Justice for those of limited means." She helped many immigrants who came to her door needing assistance that they could not get anywhere else without being swindled. She freed one man from death row and proved his innocence and in her very first case she got a woman's sentence commuted from death to seven years right before she was to be hanged.She also, with the help of her trusted detective, Julius J. Kron, went after the peonage system that was mostly in the South where they lured immigrants to come and work there then they had it so they bought everything they needed at the company store at a marked up price. By the end of the month, they owed the company money and needed to keep working to pay off the debt unless someone could send money to them. The worst of them whipped them and made them work and kept them from leaving. It was just another form of slavery and the two of them took down a large part of the system.Her biggest case, though, was the Cruger case. Ruth Cruger went out one winter's day in New York City on February 13, 1917, to run some errands. She had to go to the bank and to pick up her ice skates from the motorcycle shop where they were being sharpened. She never made it home. Her sister, Christina raised the alarm to her other sister Helen who was at work that Ruth hadn't come home yet and it had been hours. Helen told her she had probably gone ice skating but that she would look for her. Helen could not find her either and more importantly, Ruth had never made it to the bank. She called the lawyer their father, an accountant knew and he called their parents who were in Boston and then the police.Helen retraced her steps the next day including the mysterious stop at a stationary store. She stopped by the motorcycle shop twice before it showed signs of being open and talked to Alfredo Cocchi the owner who said that he returned her skates and that she went east. The police received a report from a cab driver that Ruth was seen getting into a cab with a man. Now, Ruth was a sweet innocent young girl according to her family and while she talked about a boy she knew at Columbia University it wasn't serious enough to name him to her family or for her to run away with him. The police were now seeing this as a runaway case and not a kidnapping.But because the case was so high profile and the victim so young and beautiful the mayor of New York made sure to get her picture out there and people saw it nationwide on the movie screen and in papers. She became known as the Heatherbloom Girl. Leads went nowhere. Mr. Cruger himself combed the area where she was last seen to be going and where the cab was said to have dropped her off and found nothing. There were girls who were called in about that looked like her but turned out not to be her. He had hired a detective at the start but that didn't work out so he fired him.In June Mr. Cruger would hire Grace to help him find his daughter and help him she would. She didn't believe that his daughter had run away. She was quite sure that she was already dead and it was a matter of finding where the body was and she had a pretty good idea of where to look. While Grace would solve this case, the complexities of it would tie up the court system and make it hard for Ruth Cruger to get justice. This case really puts Grace on the map and she could do no wrong. She championed her pet cause of white slavery and helping young girls escape the clutches of forced prostitution. But the higher the pedestal, the greater the fall. And fall she would by her own hand. But she still never stopped helping people in need throughout her life and she was a woman to be admired for all her flaws.
    • 4/5
      This was so goddamn good. And so sad because of how relevant it still is today.
    • 2/5
      This book was a disappointment; one of the best-worst books I’ve read, if that makes any sense. The story has such promise. It’s an interesting part of American history and New York City history. And yet the author deeply needed a better editor, someone to come in and (a) cut some words and (b) help make sense of the narrative flow. Because as interesting as it is, it’s a tedious read—which is really a shame given the content possibilities.
    • 5/5
      Looking up a different book on Amazon my clicks led me to view the title “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes” with the information in small caps designating this book as “The True Story of New York City's Greatest Female Detective…” I'll pause in my review to explain why I had to learn more about this book. I am of a generation that learned of few women's contributions in school. I learned of Florence Nightingale and Marie Curie as my Mother was a nurse. In 4th grade, I remember learning about Clara Barton and Helen Keller, primarily due to my library browsing discovery of a biography series, Childhood of Famous Americans. My love of reading mysteries began with the Nancy Drew series and by high school discovered the mysteries by Mary Stewart and Phyllis Whitney.

      My knowledge of American history is also limited by a public school experience of studying American history in the 9th grade when we started the school year with the voyage of Columbus discovering America and ending the school year at the Civil War. In 10th grade, we studied World Cultures. In 11th grade, we again studied American History. However, we started the school year with the voyage of Columbus discovering America and ending the school year at the Civil War. In 12th grade, we studied the 3 branches of government. I decided to take a course in American History as one of my electives during my undergrad studies and I could hardly believe when the professor announced the cycle of study would repeat my 9th and 11th grade experiences from that January to May. My knowledge of American History is void between the Civil War and the day Kennedy was shot in Dallas as we learned leaving a field trip of historical Philadelphia in 5th grade. Thankfully my husband has been very supportive in helping me find excellent documentaries and books to help me absorb the learning I missed between the Civil War and November 1963.My first view of the title “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes” envisioned a fictional character that was taking advantage of the awareness of Sherlock Holmes as originally created by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and in the limelight after the portrayal by Benedict Cumberbatch in the television series (2010-2017) which continues to find new viewers on Netflix. To realize that “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes” was a real person and not a fictional character was fascinating in itself. I couldn't wait to discover the “The True Story of New York City's Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 Missing Girl Case that Captivated a Nation.”

      When the St. Martin's Paperbacks Edition arrived I briefly wondered if this might become a dry biographical account and if I would finish the book. I decided to set that thought aside and begin reading. I could hardly put the book down. Brad Ricca is to be applauded for the phenomenal research that is clearly evident to the reader even prior to reading the Author's Note, Notes, Bibliography, Resources, Acknowledgments and viewing the Index at the back of the book. Grace Humiston, deemed “Mrs. Sherlock Holmes” was a lawyer, detective, first female U.S. District Attorney, and should be heralded far and wide for all of her firsts and laudable achievements. Grace's motto – “Justice for those of limited means for moderate fees.” What an incredible human being. What an extraordinary woman. What an inspiring life. Grace Humiston, an American Hero.

      After reading a book of this caliber the rating of 5 stars seems too ordinary. I highly recommend this engrossing reading experience that has the reader luxuriating in the awesome work of author Brad Ricca in bringing the life and achievements of Grace Humiston to our attention.
    • 4/5
      Mrs Sherlock Holmes by Brad RicciThis narrative biography of Grace Humiston (earlier known as Quackenbos, her 1st husband’s surname), is about a female lawyer and a sometimes consulting detective. It's a fascinating read about someone who was once notable in the early 20th century for her extensive investigative work on more than one famous case. She fought for justice for those of limited means. Grace worked tirelessly to help get pardons for the innocent--Charles Stielow (a death row inmate) and his brother-in-law, Nelson Green, on a murder case that was grossly mishandled by police. And before that, she helped a woman, Antoinette Tolla, who’d shot a man in self-defense when he’d attempted an attack on her. There are other cases included of Grace Humiston's work and one particular highlighted case that takes up a good portion of the book -- and it's what holds, in my opinion, the book's intriguing hook. It was the case on the disappearace of the eighteen-year-old, Ruth Cruger, in 1917. Female lawyer, Grace Humiston was first approached by the missing girl's father, Henry, because of Grace's investigative reputation. Grace agreed to take the case and continued working it with the police, eventually becoming the police's lead detective. The Ruth Cruger case is given in great detail and accents the DA and police's investigation into the girl's disappearance. These sequences, presented in quite a few chapters thoughout the book, reveal well-spaced clues on how the crime is brought to a conclusion. As Grace, aided by her sometimes business partner, private detective, Julius Kron, follows up on the case's facts, it creates an atmosphere reminiscent of a mystery novel.The title, MRS. SHERLOCK HOLMES, author, Brad Ricca, informs his readers that the earliest usage he could find of this nickname was from an article, 'She's Sherlock of Cruger Case" (Muskogee Times-Democrat, June 20, 1917). This is a finely researched book, with extensive index and referenced end notes. And it doesn't shy away from presenting the mistakes its subject, Grace Humiston, made after she became a strong advocate for better treatment of missing persons, and particularly missing young women, by male police detectives, who too often dismissed missing girls as just gone "wayward" and not as crime victims. Grace spoke openly on what she believed was a white-slave trade and, mistakenly, once allowed herself to get ahead of the facts, citing reports of buried female victims with no evidence ever found on those claims. And so, Grace Humiston, fell from grace. It is admirable when a book's author/biographer includes both success and failures in the life of his written-about subjects. For more reasons than one, I think, this is an intriguing book that's well worth taking the time to read.
    • 3/5
      I think this could have been a good story but I found it to be incredibly disjointed and hard to follow.
    • 4/5
      If you are interested in the gritty reality of NYC in the early part of the 20th Century, this might just meet your needs. Ricca's research and writing combine to provide a compelling insight into the colliding worlds and cultures of turn of the century America. I must confess that while I personally, had no idea of the stories presented in the pages of Mrs. Sherlock Holmes, and being drawn into the lives of bygone injustices, I am not sure how I feel about the main character in the end. Ricca's writing style is encompassing narration of such a wholeness in presentation that when he reaches the end of researches supplies you are left feeling somewhat let down. How can we not have ALL the answers and know what really happened?!? One detail that I did find soothing to that injury, was his inclusion of 'end notes' for most of the persons of interest presented in the body. So while, you are left asking yourself....wait, where's the rest, is that all, but what about and so what happened then.....you at least know how the who(s) bowed out.
    • 3/5
      “The true story of New York City’s Greatest Female Detective and the 1917 missing girl case that captivated a nation.”In 1901, Mary Grace Quackenbos was a night student in the New York University School of Law. Her professor taught law in a way that made sense to her – facts and reason were the paramount issues. She completed the three year course in two years and in 1905 was admitted to the New York State bar. From there she began work with Legal Aid and when she became involved with an appeal that would save a woman from the electric chair she became a detective, finding the murder weapon.One of the cover blurbs states that the book “ranks right up there with the most absorbing mystery novels.” I wouldn’t go that far. The book is well documented and interesting, but it is more a documentary than a drama. I learned about Mary, but I never got to know her.Mary went on to handle a notorious missing girl case, that of 18 year-old Ruth Cruger. She eventually found Ruth’s murdered body, but in the process she both won and lost the regard of the police department. She became the first female consulting detective to the New York City police, the first female US District Attorney, and was known in the press as Mrs. Sherlock Holmes. She became hated by, and a target of, The Black Hand—a widely feared secret criminal society believed to be made up of Italians. She exposed police corruption. Yet, she is unknown to most of us.Of all the cases related in the book, I found the story of Sunny Side the most interesting. I never gave a thought to the question of how cotton plantation owners continued to operate after the Civil War and the answer was surprising to me. In 1907, Charles Pettick, acting under orders from the US Assistant Attorney General, found his way into the Sunny Side Plantation near Greenville, Mississippi. Caught by two plantation bosses he was interrogated by C. B. Owens, owner of the Red Leaf Plantation on the neighboring property. When Pettick told Owens who he was working for Owens replied, “If the President of the United States comes down here on such an errand, we will put him in the chain gang,too!” The Italian Ambassador to the United States had also heard of Sunny Side and told the Assistant Attorney General that he wanted Mary Quackenbos to investigate. Mary and Pettick went to Mississippi and discovered that what now ran the cotton plantations wasn’t slavery in that no physical coercion with chains or whips kept the workers – white Italians imported directly from Italy – but peonage, the slavery of economics. They worked for a salary, but paid for everything, including the items needed to do their work, ending up at the end of a pay period with not even enough to survive on. Some decided to run away. They were usually run down and stripped of everything but the clothes on their backs, some met their deaths escaping, others succeeded. The epilogue and notes at the end of the book describe how difficult it was to write non-fiction about the past. Most official records from this period have been destroyed but Brad Ricca has done a good job and Mrs. Sherlock Holmes is not a character you will forget.