Kate Fansler uncharacteristically falls apart when her husband is kidnapped and she is told that he will not be released unless she publishes an essay retracting everything she has ever written or said about feminism; fortunately for Kate, friends are able to figure out who has kidnapped Reed and to free him quite quickly. But the worry remains: the plotters of this action clearly have Kate in their sights, evidently for her outspoken feminist beliefs; unless, perhaps, their wrath is a little more personal than that…. “The Puzzled Heart” was published in 1998 and rails against various right-wing figures of that time, such as Pat Buchanan and Pat Robertson. The thing that got to me in this, the 12th book in the Kate Fansler mystery series, is that some 24 years later, things are so much worse for women in the US than they were when this was published, which is just depressing. Also, we are introduced to Kate’s “best friend” Leslie, a character who has never appeared in the previous 11 books, which I found quite jarring, to say the least. I would recommend the book for those (like me) wanting to read the complete series, otherwise give it a miss unless you want to wallow in frustration over the current state of the world. ( )