It's September 1902, and Mary MacDougall has fulfilled her greatest dream-opening her own detective agency. But the achievement doesn't come without complication. Mary's father insists that an older cousin come to work with her-as both secretary and minder. Jeanette Harrison pledges to keep the plucky sleuth away from danger, as well as from her unsuitable suitor Edmond Roy. This arrangement, embarrassingly, makes Mary the only detective in the state with a chaperone. The new agency's first cases hardly seem to portend danger or significance. There's the affair of the nicked napkin rings...the problem of the purloined pocket watch...and the matter of the four filched felines. Mary and Jeanette have not the slightest notion that one of these modest little matters will blow up into the most consequential and perilous case of the heiress-sleuth's budding career. What begins in triviality mushrooms into disappearance, betrayal, international intrigue, and murder. As she learns more and more, Mary's prospects for making the acquaintance of an assassin's blade improve exponentially. Witty, fast-paced, and enthralling, A FATAL FONDNESS-the fourth tale in the series-delves deeply into Mary's world and paints the portrait of an unconventional young woman ever-ready to defy propriety for the sake of justice. "I love great historical fiction and [Mary MacDougall] delivers." -I Read What You Write"In the spirit of Nancy Drew and the Corner House Girls... [Audry] captures the turn-of-the-century period perfectly, when young women like Mary were trying to burst out of Victorian expectations to become their own person." -Mary Ann Grossmann, St. Paul Pioneer Press