Publication Date: April 7, 2026
For Leona Gladney, former woman soldier of the Union Army, life goes on despite the echoes of the battlefield in her heart. Now a suffragist and budding socialite in Brooklyn Heights, she yearns for a literary life and family. But her husband’s business partner embezzles their money and disappears.
The society matrons of Brooklyn Heights turn a gimlet eye on Leona after the suspicious death of a wealthy friend. Leona will do anything to find justice for her friend and clear her own name, but she finds only secrets, seances and murder.
Set in 1860s Brooklyn Heights, New York, Author Jan Matthews introduces readers to Leona, who disguised herself to fight as a soldier in the Union Army as Leo in The Last Fatal Hour.
Returning from the war, Leona now wants to be a writer, but due to financial hardships she and her husband are facing, the magazine she and a friend were hoping to start has to go on the back burner. The story goes from past to present and back again without warning. The past appears in her dreams but also at times when she’s awake, and it often disrupted the flow of the story.
A socialite wannabe and a suffragette, Leona navigates society and the gossip and is struggling after the murder of one of her friends. Especially when she’s accused of stealing her jewelry and is a suspect in her murder, because the police haven’t ruled her out as a suspect, she’s sleuthing on her own after promising her husband and the police detective on the case that she wouldn’t.
The story held my interest once Leona was in the thick of things. Trying to solve multiple crimes, looking for missing people, and befriending those she shouldn’t. Not everyone is as they seem and there are so many twists and turns along with a depth to their actions. The story goes off in tangents and then the details are drawn back in to piece the clues together. Of course, Leona solves the many crimes but not before fingers are pointed at her, and she ends up in jail.
There’s a satisfying conclusion but some loose ends. The epilogue was a nice addition but needed to go further. Throughout, timeframes were needed for how much time had elapsed.
The Last Fatal Hour is a one-woman show with Leona outsmarting everyone to figure out whodunnit.
Jan Matthews is an American expat living in the sunshine in Portugal. She is (finally) retired from HIM and writes historical mysteries from the Middle Ages to World War I. When not writing or drinking coffee and wine in nearby cafes, she knits and crochets for charity and reviews books on her blog.
