Just So Stories

Hachette Australia

Aug 28, 2024 | 9780733652066 | RRP $32.99

What a thoroughly enjoyable read this has been over the past few nights! I’m a tragic when it comes to cosy crime and murder mystery books and over the past couple of years I’ve had quite a number of YA titles to review, and also listened to a few adult titles on audio in the car (at the moment it’s an Agatha Raisin jag), but this one is very different to all of those.

Because this one is based on actual historical personages and, more than that, it is a slice of Adelaide history. Now, our recent little mini-vacay to Adelaide confirmed my opinion from a decade ago when I was on a work trip to that city – it’s a lovely place and there is much to explore about both its past and its present. There’s a line in the book about Sydney and Melbourne being not much interested in Adelaide, and TBH, yes, as a Sydney girl growing up, I certainly knew about Adelaide and I think I probably knew about Colonel Light – and that just about sums it up.

Now I know that Kate Cocks was the first employed female police officer on equal pay and entitlements – not just in South Australia but anywhere in the British Commonwealth (then Empire). As we all know, SA was the first state in Australia to give women the vote, so it is clear that the rights of women, lagging so far behind elsewhere were making some real progress in that southern state.

Laine Anderson has provided us with a fictionalised account of Kate Boadicea Cocks‘ [don’t you LOVE the Boadicea?! all I got was Marjorie 🤔] life which sticks very closely to fact. The case that this book relates is also based on fact.

In that period of history, there were many young women lured to the city with the prospect of respectable work only to be trapped and coerced into prostitution. The Victorian era is not a pretty history in many places but in our cities, that holds even more true.

Anderson refrains from portraying Kate Cocks as some kind of saint, though there is no disputing her strong moral and religious convictions, but instead shows her to be a flawed human being like us all, sometimes hot-headed and brusque, over-bearing and cocksure.

That being said, there is little doubt that her motives in all were genuine and humanitarian. Her beneficence to women and children in particular, are now part of Adelaide’s proud history.

This was a fascinating read, sometimes quite tense but also leavened with moments of humour, and I am now looking forward to the next instalment very much.

Congratulations Lainie Anderson on a fabulous, diverting and instructive historical fiction – exactly the kind I relish! Huge 5 💜💚🤍💚💜 Mighty Girl rating! And thanks for introducing me to such a noteworthy Australian.