Maggie's close friend and construction company owner, Rachel Minsky has been accused of murder. Murder of another company owner. Maggie is employed by Rachel's brother to investigate as it seems that all the evidence points to Rachel's guilt.
Really enjoyed this story, so easy to read this well-written story.
Received an Advanced Reader Copy ( )

The time was spring 1942. Maggie Sullivan was a 28-year-old private eye in Dayton, Ohio. She's spunky, confident, and good at her job. As a liberated, independent, self-sufficient woman, she was born a few decades too soon.
One day a friend came to her office to tell her that his boss, Rachel Minsky, was in jail charged with murder. Rachel was Maggie's one good woman friend. She didn't talk much about her family. They were not happy that Rachel was not following the typical path for well-educated, well-off, Jewish woman. She was single, had her own apartment, and owned her own construction company.
Even though her brother was a lawyer, she wanted to talk to Maggie. She asked Maggie to get an envelope that was hidden in her office and burn it without opening it and to call her lawyer brother and tell him she was in jail.
The body of a competitor in the construction business was found on the company’s property. She had been arguing with him a few days prior and the police decided very quickly that she was the killer. She turned to Maggie to prove her innocence.
Pearl Harbor had been bombed only a few months earlier but the effects were beginning to be felt: While previously “war had been good for putting people without jobs during the depression back to work,” it hadn’t happened yet on the domestic front. Men were enlisting in the military, creating a shortage of experienced workers . Paper and metal and the machines to process them were being repurposed for military-based projects. For example, metal paper napkin holders were often unavailable on restaurant tables. Construction jobs were rarer, making competition greater.
With the help of Heebs, a young newsboy Maggie befriended, they were able to dig deeply into the murder circumstances.
Women’s lives were changing, sometimes in relatively minor ways–“I stretch my legs out, thinking I could possibly start to like slacks”– and sometimes more substantially–“no matter how many times I prove myself, he clung to his stubborn idea it was pure luck, results from batting my eyes at susceptible men, when I beat him to a solution.” Some men were stuck in their biases: “Dames don't have to fight for what they get. You don't even know how to. All you know how to do is strut around and give orders and act important.”
Most important, Maggie has to decide what would happen to her if she became permanently involved with a man she really liked: “Being with him like this, would encourage expectations on his part. Expectations which I couldn't meet. Even continuing as we were now, I would lose some vital part of myself. At the back of my mind there would be the weight of knowing I held his happiness in my hands. It would change me. In some moment when I needed to make a split-second decision, I might hesitate, knowing how the loss of me would affect him.”
DAMES FIGHT HARDER is part of a series. I’ve read and enjoyed all of the books. M. Ruth Myers allows us to get inside the character, to understand her motivations and situations. She takes us to Dayton, Ohio, in 1942 and shows us what it was like. The story generally flows although there are several repetitions when she briefly reviews the case. There is too much information about the construction industry.
It’s a nice escape from the news without resorting to descriptive violence or sex or profanity. ( )