Like her other books, this tale is wonderfully researched and contains the same unique, feminine perceptions of living around the time right before the Civil War. But unlike her previous tales, The Stalking Horse takes too long to get going and there are too many distracting subplots that hinder the progress of the main story line.

Seneca Fall's librarian/amateur sleuth Glynis Tryone is concerned about her niece and with ample reason. Looking for adventure not accorded to many women in 1861, Bronwen Llyr joins the Pinkerton Detective Agency and is sent to Montgomery, Alabama, on what's supposed to be a simple assignment.

While posing as Jane Dowling, daughter of a railroad magnate, Bronwen overhears what she believes is a plot of some kind by Southern secessionists. After two of her fellow Pinkerton agents are murdered trying to relay information concerning this plot, Bronwen knows her life is in danger.

Fleeing Montgomery, she teams up with Tristan Marshall, a fugitive running from a bogus murder charge and a life of servitude. Together they race against time and the secessionists to get what information Bronwen has to Pinkerton and to Northern sympathizers.

It's takes a while to get past the setup of The Stalking Horse; readers who can overlook the first 100 pages and get to the meat of the story will be rewarded – wonderful, fascinating historical touches abound. And Bronwen is a fine and feisty heroine – a worthy successor to her Aunt Glynis.

But I have to admit, if I had not read all of Ms. Monfredo's previous works, I'm not sure that I would have been inspired to read past the first 100 pages of this book. And having made that far, I found the extraordinary number of subplots, concerning the many characters from this tale – as well as the many characters from previous Senaca Falls mysteries – distracting.

Then again, I loved the history lesson I received from The Stalking Horse. I felt like I was getting an inside look at one of the most turbulent times in our country's history. And, there's a fascinating and very different take on Mary Todd Lincoln in this tale.

One of Ms. Monfredo's strengths is her ability to take real-life as well as fictional historical characters, particularly women, and portray them by looking at their point of view of the world around them. Instead of the hysterical shrew history often depicts, Monfredo's Mary Todd Lincoln is portrayed as well-educated, passionately in love with her husband, strong-willed and always ready to speak her mind.

Readers will gain an interesting and very different perspective of a woman history has often maligned or ignored. It's wonderful historical insights like this that make The Stalking Horse a book worth reading.

--Judith Flavell