The Pinks reads like a historical thriller,

with one fascinating plot twist: it is based wholly on truth.

Chris Enss’s The Pinks offers an engrossing look at the women’s flank of the famed Pinkerton group, which provided services of security, protection, investigation, and, in many cases, infiltration by its initially all-male staff of “private eyes.”

Allan Pinkerton had an innovative and invasive approach to dealing with crime and criminals. After immigrating to the United States from Scotland, he eventually established the Pinkerton offices in Chicago. Six years after the agency opened, Kate Warne had the audacious foresight to apply for a job as a Pinkerton detective, despite the fact that Pinkerton himself had never considered hiring women. Warne argued that women could assume undercover roles as ably as men, and that feminine intuition and charm could help them excel as undercover agents.

Though Pinkerton knew the work would be dangerous, he hired Warne and assigned her to numerous cases. Enss depicts Warne as an excellent actress, able to alter her appearance, accent, and mood quickly and convincingly. Pinkerton’s investigations were often complex and went on for extended periods of time as the agents gained the confidence of key individuals—or the guilty parties themselves. Warne rose to every challenge, including escorting a disguised Abraham Lincoln to Washington via train in 1861. The then president-elect was in danger of assassination by a Baltimore cadre of secessionists who wanted Lincoln dead before he even had a chance to take office.

The Pinks notes how Warne’s success encouraged Pinkerton to employ other women, placing them in roles of general investigation or even espionage during the Civil War. They pursued murderers, carried classified documents, decoded messages, and maintained their cover in highly charged situations. Ultimately, the Pinkerton logo became that of a watchful female eye, accompanied by the apt motto of “We Never Sleep.” However, despite Pinkerton’s equal-opportunity mind-set, official American police forces did not hire female detectives until the late nineteenth century.

The Pinks details Warne’s career as a Pinkerton detective, along with various other cases assigned to female agents like Hattie Lawton, Dr. Mary Edwards Walker, and the artistically gifted Lavinia “Vinnie” Ream. Filled with intrigue, suspense, bravery, and women’s accomplishments, The Pinks reads like a historical thriller with one fascinating plot twist: it is based wholly on truth.

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The Pinks: The First Women Detectives, Operatives, and Spies with

the Pinkerton National Detective Agency

The Pinks: The First Women Detectives, Operatives, and Spies with the Pinkerton National Detective Agency is recommended for history, women’s issues, and sociology holdings with a special interest in law enforcement as it surveys the Pinkerton Detective Agency and the true stories surrounding the first woman detective in America and those who came after her. Chapters capture feats of courage, daring, and historical import as they follow female agents who pursue justice and whose exploits added to American history and early struggles for justice. No women’s history collection should be without this lively, important survey. Midwest Book Review

Throughout the month of January

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The First Women Detectives, Operatives and Spies with

the Pinkerton Detective Agency

The idea of peace on earth good will towards men is lost on the masses standing in the one and only opened security checkpoint line at Sky Harbor Airport. It certainly isn’t a sentiment that springs to my mind standing behind the family of eight who wait until they reach the X-ray scanner to remove their jackets, shoes, laptops, cell phones, jewelry, and the case of hot sauce they purchased from a street vendor in Winslow stuffed in their pockets.

I’m not struck with confidence by the crack security people manning the perimeter. The ones who insist that a mother remove the socks from her infant’s feet because there is a sneaker pattern crocheted into the design. Yeah…  We all know that’s how every bad guy operates, right? It isn’t some religious fanatic with an ax to grind sneaking onboard with something vile. It’s a young mother who dared to put cute socks on her baby with a whimsical design.

Flying in this country has turned into an amazingly arduous process, especially boarding he plane, which has now become this tedious Bataan death march with American Tourister overnight bags. I always get stuck behind this one guy, who takes forever to get situated. He’s clogging the aisle like a piece of human cholesterol jammed in the passengerial artery. You just want to get that soft drink cart and flush his behind out the back door. He’s folding that sport jacket like he’s in the color guard at Arlington National Cemetery.

Or else I get stuck behind a wizard who wants to beat the system by gaffer-taping a twine handle onto a refrigerator-freezer box and calling it “carry on.” Wedging it into the overhead with hydraulic jacks.

And exactly when did flight attendants in this country get so cranky? If they enforce their own rules perhaps things would go a bit smoother for themselves and the passengers who do follow their mandates. I know it’s a tough job. There’s got to be a thousand different ways to tie that neckerchief but why take it out on me? You know the worst thing about it is they don’t even come clean with you and tell you how much they hate you. They treat you with a highly contrived air of mock civility, that tight, pursed-lip grin where they nod agreement with everything you say. You know right behind that face plate they barely tolerate your very existence.

I’d rather they just come out in the open and say, “Hey, listen, jerk. When I was eighteen years old, I made a horrible vocational error, all right? I turned my entire adult life in for cheap airfare to Barbados. Now I’ve got hair with the tensile strength of Elsa Lanchester in Bride of Frankenstein. I haven’t met Mr. Right. I’m a waitress in a bad restaurant at thirty thousand feet.

What about when you leave the plane and they’ve got them propped by the front door in that complete android catatonic stupor where they look like the Yul Brynner robot from Westworld when he blew a headpipe. “Bye. Bye. Bye, Bye.” Part of this is the airline I used. It rhymes with Southwest. Their motto is, “Hey, you know we aren’t good at our job and you decided to fly with us anyway. So, some of this is on you.”

You know who I feel sorry for in the whole air-travel scenario? It’s the poor person who has to drive the jetway. You know the little accordion tentacle that weaves its way out to meet the plane? Everybody else is Waldo Pepperin’ around in their leather jackets, the right stuff coursing through their veins as they push the outside of the envelope. Their  job is to drive the building.

I’m going to start the new year out right and NOT fly anywhere. I’ll be home resolving to make better bad decisions.

Aside from gravity and how good it feels to put a Q-tip too far into your ear, nothing quite unites mankind like the fact that at one time or another, just about all of us have had a lousy job. I don’t know, maybe you still have that lousy job. There are many days, and this one is no exception, when I feel I made a serious vocational error. Of course, it’s not as bad as the singing telegram job I had while I was in college.

The company was called Bananagrams Singing Telegrams. The signature costume was, you guessed it, a banana. I spent more than a year driving around various parts of Tucson, Arizona, dressed as a banana, a mermaid, a monkey, and a chicken. I was running behind one late afternoon when I got to the singing telegram business and was quickly thrown into a frog costume. The costume was a skin-tight number which required you have only the bare essentials under the garment. The foam head of the costume was massive but the eyeholes were positioned perfectly for me to see to drive my pickup. What I hadn’t considered was how I was going to drive the vehicle with webbed hands and feet. Only a twenty-something would bypass such particulars.

As soon the manager of the company helped me into the frog costume, she left. I was alone outside a strip-mall trying to master the art of shoving a dozen helium-filled balloons into the cab of my truck. I had the colorful balloon bouquet positioned just so in the seat, had managed to weigh them down with my purse, and was holding them out of the way so I could close the door when I realized the keys to the vehicle were lying on the dashboard. I stuck my webbed hand in the door but it was too late. The locked door closed on the webbed hand and I couldn’t get it out. No amount of tugging at the web would dislodge it. The skin-tight suit zipped in the back and stopped in the middle of the giant foam head. I couldn’t reach it and, even if I could, I had only the bare essentials on underneath so…

After wrestling for more than fifteen minutes to free the arm of the frog costume from the door, I decided to try and flag down a passerby. I started waving at cars speeding along the thoroughfare, but they thought I was an advertisement and honked and waved back at me as they continued on their way. At long last, a family stopped to see what was going on. Their little dog went crazy at the sight of a giant frog, but they did manage to help get me free.

My grandfather always used to say, “Chris,” and about five minutes later, I’d say, “Yes, Grandpa?” And then he’d say, “Chris, always do something you love, and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Of course, my grandfather worked at an ammunition packing plant and he was extremely sarcastic, but it’s a cute story.

One of the best jobs I had in my life was working at the Old Tucson Movie Studio. I started out as a saloon girl and graduated to stunt person. If I wasn’t on the south side of sixty and had the patience now to deal with rage inducing park guests, I’d want to give it another try. I should just stick with writing and hope for a better tomorrow.