The Heiress in Kent

April 5, 2021
An investigation into massive financial fraud drives Kopp’s inventive fifth novel fictionalizing his family’s history (after 2017’s A Child’s Breath). In 1857, a financial panic leads to bank failures across the U.S., placing the author’s great-grandparents, Stanislaus and Karolina Kopp, at risk of losing their Allen County, Ohio, farm. In 1859, Sir Richard Mayne, commissioner of the London Metropolitan Police, dispatches Det. Richard Cordwell to the U.S. on a sensitive assignment from the queen herself. The royals have significant investments in American railroads, and Victoria fears another financial panic in the states “could ruin the British economy and incite the Yorkshire Chartists to overthrow” her. Cordwell seeks to avert that calamity by getting to the bottom of the origin of the panic. Cordwell is a strong enough lead to make his appearance in future volumes welcome. Kopp’s ability to make a white-collar crime an intriguing plot focus is impressive.