Mary Louise : A Classic Mystery for Young Women

The first book from The Bluebird Books series of novels popular with teenage girls in the 1910s and 1920s. The series was begun by L. Frank Baum using his Edith Van Dyne pseudonym. The books are concerned with adolescent girl detectives. “Mary Louis” was originally written as a tribute to Baum's favorite sister, Mary Louise Baum Brewster. The title character is Mary Louise Burrows. In the first books of the series, she is a fifteen-year-old girl with unusual maturity (though the other girls in her boarding school find her somewhat priggish). She is suddenly confronted with the fact that her beloved grandfather is suspected of no less a crime than treason against the United States. With the help of old and new friends of Mary Louise, her grandfather's innocence is revealed and the truth is uncovered. The novel features a federal agent named John O'Gorman; he is assisted by his daughter Josie, a young woman he has himself trained to function as an investigator.