A Truth Most Treacherous

When Cassie Gwynne stumbles across the dead body of thoroughly unpleasant customs collector Chester Pence in the marsh, no one is terribly torn up about his untimely demise. What Cassie is upset about, though, is that her dear friend Mr. Hu has confessed to the crime. She is confident that he's innocent. But the official word is that, since they have a confession, no further investigation is needed. It's up to Cassie to unravel the truth.

Genevieve Essig has written another delightful entry in the story of Cassie Gwynne! Cassie puts her considerable skills of observation and deduction to work yet again to solve a crime, and she does a bang-up job. She has the help of family and friends along the way, as well as a handful of colorful characters about town, and things are resolved satisfactorily.

Essig does a great job giving us a vivid picture of Florida in the late nineteenth century. She paints quite the portrait of anti-Chinese sentiment and shows how easy it would be for a corrupt operator like Pence to turn people against the town's Chinese residents. Even people who might not have minded the Chinese folks who came to Fernandina started to give Mr. Hu and Mr. Green a bit of side-eye when Pence started throwing around his official weight with accusations of misconduct.

Not only is Cassie investigating this particular crime, but she's still trying to learn more about what happened to her father. Her brother Burt is in New York, seeing what he can find out and hopefully staying out of harm's way, but danger lurks for both Burt and Cassie. Has the Anti-Chinese Society followed Cassie to Fernandina, and if so, why?

In this book, we get more back story about Jake and Hughes as well as a jolly good mystery to solve. We meet Miss Victoria Phillips, an elegant young woman from Hughes's past, and Cassie finds herself wondering if she imagined Hughes's feelings for her. He doesn't seem to be pushing Miss Phillips away, and his mother, the daunting Georgiana DeVries, certainly seems to be encouraging Hughes in Miss Phillips' direction. There's an entertaining side plot involving Miss Phillips wherein we learn that she may not be what she purports to be, and we see a new side of Mrs. DeVries as well. It was fun getting to learn more about some of the not-quite-front-and-center characters in the story.

With Cassie Gwynne, Genevieve Essig gives us a smart, resourceful heroine, a mystery with enough twists and turns to keep you guessing, insight into the social issue of racial discrimination, and a little bit of romance, too. It's a thoroughly enjoyable, well-rounded read.