Reviewed by Alice DiNizo for Readers' Favorite

It is Victorian times and "lady typewriter" (secretary in modern times), Hattie Davish, arrives in Eureka Springs, Arkansas, to work for Mother Trevelyn, the head of the American Women's Temperance Coalition. The AWCT is comprised of women who wish to rid alcohol from homes and ban its public sales. Now here in Eureka Springs, which is known for its sixty springs whose mineral waters promise cures for many ailments, the women of AWTC are in full swing, wearing their sky-blue color that represents purity and heaven, singing their theme song and smashing the windows of local bars serving alcohol. Local non-drinking bar owner, George Shulman, is furious with the AWTC but is he responsible as Mother Trevelyn turns up missing and then dead, found in a trunk of clothing she was giving to charity? Hattie is told that her hotel bill has been paid for a week but her services are no longer required by the AWTC once she deals with Mother Trevelyn's correspondence that includes death threats and references to blackmail and murder. Then Hattie is attacked at nighttime in an alley, a time of day when no respectable woman back then was to be wandering about town. What on earth is going on in this little Ozark community?

"A Lack of Temperance" is a delightfully well-written mystery set in Victorian times that will delight whodunit fans everywhere. Hattie Davish is more than believable as a main character and in "A Lack of Temperance", local doctor Walter Grice, Irish hotel maid Mary Flanagan, AWTC members Cordelia Angelwood and Josephine Piers, bar owner George Shulman, the mysterious John Martin, the elderly Shaw sisters Lizzie and Lucy, and all other characters add well to the plot line. Mystery readers everywhere will love "A Lack of Temperance", some will recall Carrie Nation and her crew of long ago bar wreckers, and all will eagerly await more Hattie Davish stories from Anna Loan-Wilsey.