One evening, acting as ladies' maid to Mrs. Studebaker, she accompanies her mistress to a dinner party at the Harper house next door. Waiting like a good maid in the hall outside the dining room, Hilda overhears Judge Harper and his wife talk of his sister, a missionary in China whom he has persuaded to come home, lest she be caught up in the Boxer Rebellion.

Hilda thinks nothing of it at the time – forgets about Miss Harper, in fact, until she stumbles across Miss Harper's badly beaten body, concealed in a lilac hedge. After that, Miss Harper and her fate are all Hilda can think of. She knows the police are less than diligent; she knows they will never suspect anyone in the wealthy, well-known Harper family of committing murder. Instead, the police are far more likely to focus on someone powerless, someone like the immigrant girl who found the body.

Death in Red Lacquer gives what seems to be an accurate picture of the restrictions and responsibilities of housemaids in turn-of-the-century South Bend, detailing Hilda's daily round as she tries to work around it to investigate the murder. Religious bigotry, racism, and snobbery all find their way into the brief pages of this book. That, in my opinion, is what made this book interesting to read, yet a weak mystery.

By clinging closely to the reality of Hilda's daily life, Jeanne M. Dams made it next to impossible for Hilda to discover clues, chase after red herrings, draw and discard conclusions. This means that the reader has no chance to do any of those things, either. In the end, Hilda does not solve the crime so much as have the solution thrust upon her, and even that is incomplete. At the very end, I was left wondering about one aspect of the crime and that left a dissatisfied taste in my mouth.

What made this an acceptable read for me was Hilda herself. I'm curious to see what happens to her next, to see how she is drawn into the next mystery. I hope, however, that I'm not left with as big a question the next time.

--Katy Cooper