What is a young lady like Loveday Brooke doing in a private detective agency? She's working there, as a clever sleuth, a female Sherlock Holmes of sorts. Excerpts: "Loveday Brooke, at this period of her career, was a little over thirty years of age, and could be best described in a series of negations. "She was not tall, she was not short; she was not dark, she was not fair; she was neither handsome nor ugly. Her features were altogether nondescript; her one noticeable trait was a habit she had, when absorbed in thought, of dropping her eyelids over her eyes till only a line of eyeball showed, and she appeared to be looking out at the world through a slit, instead of through a window. Her dress was invariably black, and was almost Quaker-like in its neat primness." But what one could say affirmatively about her was that Loveday Brooke was a naturally talented private detective, a chosen career that had cut her off sharply from her former associates and her position in society. Catherine Louisa Pirkis (1841 - 4 October 1910) was a British author. She wrote numerous short stories and 14 novels between 1877 and 1894, and is perhaps best known today for her detective stories featuring Loveday Brooke, appearing in the Ludgate Magazine in 1894. She moved from writing to animal charity work and, together with her husband, was one of the founders of the National Canine Defence League in 1891.