“Something is rotten in the state of Berkeley“ –1881 Blue and Gold Yearbook, University of California: Berkeley In Scholarly Pursuits, the sixth full-length novel in the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco mystery series, Locke explores life on the University of California: Berkeley campus in 1881, where Laura and her friends face the remarkably modern problems of fraternity hazings, … remarkably modern problems of fraternity hazings, fraught romantic relationships, and fractious faculty politics.
While Annie and Nate Dawson and friends and family in the O’Farrell Street boardinghouse await a blessed event, Laura Dawson finds herself investigating why a young Berkeley student dropped out of school in the fall of 1880.
No one, including her friend Seth Timmons, thinks this is a good idea, since she is juggling a full course load with a part-time job, but she can’t let the question of what happened to her friend go unanswered. Not when it means that other young women might be in danger.
This cozy historical mystery of romantic suspense is set in the period immediately after the fifth book in the series, Pilfered Promises, and two novellas, Kathleen Catches a Killer and Dandy Delivers. However, it can be read as a stand-alone.
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The novels and stories in the Victorian San Francisco mysteries series combine old fashioned charm with cutting edge feminism, and that feminism is more apparent in this novel than in previous ones. Instead of revolving around the O’Farrell Street boarding house, much of this story takes place at Berkeley University where hazing, particularly of female students, is blood sport.
Although Annie Dawson is seen throughout the book, she takes a supportive role to Laura Dawson, our intrepid university student. Laura attends classes, works at her job as a typesetter, attends university functions, and still makes time to solve a mystery. What is no mystery is the way the women students are treated by their male contemporaries. It would seem that boorish behavior knows no special time period.
I would encourage reading the Author’s Notes at the end of the book. It is always apparent that M. Louisa Locke has researched the life and times of Victorian Era San Francisco. In her Notes, she details particulars from her research for SCHOLARLY PURSUITS. The rather overt abuse of women in this novel strikes a very modern chord. She notes that, although not intentional, the book coincides with today’s events. I have found that many writers seem to incorporate the state of the world today in their writing and have often wondered if it is their writing or my reading of their work.
Reading this as a standalone might work, but you would be depriving yourself of the rich background story presented in the previous novels and stories. Some might pigeonhole the series as women’s fiction; I would not. It is a series for anyone who has an interest in history and how the past relates to today.
This is a fun series that is set in Dan Francisco. The plots are well conceived and the plots interesting and entertaining.
I love M. Louisa Locke’s books!
love the entire series! More please.
It was slow moving to start but got interesting and ended well. I’ve enjoyed reading all the books in the series.
This clever San Fransisco female Victorian sleuth and her beau and friends investigate a college drop-out that that may be much more sinister than anyone thought!
I just love this series! The characters are so very believable and well fleshed out. This particular book really took the reader through all the twists, turns, dead-ends and restarts that make up a real investigation. In short, it was a great read!
Great story. Locke always does a great job at telling a good story and teaching you some history as well. I learned so much about women going to college during the turn of the 20th century.
After reading the rest of the series all at once a few years ago, I felt like I waited so long for this to be published…and then it took me so long to get around to reading it, that it didn’t quite live up to the rest of the series.
The problem that I had previously was that Laura Dawson annoyed me, and I resented the time spent on her group rather than on Annie and Nate in the other books. So on the positive side, Laura really grew on me this time around (which was good, because she was the primary POV). I also really liked the introduction of Caro’s character, though I felt Seth was underutilized.
However, the plot dragged so hard. Like, it took over half the book for the characters to rehash everything multiple times to finally confirm that yes, a girl was harassed by a fraternity. And while I like the historical background info, when the action finally picked up, it happened so incredibly fast and had a very lame resolution. So I didn’t feel great about that.
I’m just hoping that there’s going to be another book, and that it goes back to focusing on Annie and Nate and the rest of the boardinghouse residents.
I really like this author. This book was a bit too long and too introspective of the protagonist. It could have been more with less.
I’ve read and enjoyed four other of Ms Locke’s books. This one was so boring and disappointing that I couldn’t finish it, though I tried twice.
I love reading this type of historical romance. Not too mushy but did not want to put it down until I finished.