Kate Warne: The first female detective of the Pinkerton Detective Agency, an 1850s badass
The main character in the Kate Devana series was born in 2037. Really, she was born 200 years earlier, inspired by Kate Warne, the first female detective of the Pinkerton Detective Agency.
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The inspiration for Kate Devana
If space is the new wild west, and it will be, then it needs a suitably gritty sheriff to defend it. The frontier will be remote. It took eight days for Intuitive Machines to reach the moon. Powerful interests will be at play.
Some authors roll the dice. Some come up with last names helping old ladies in the supermarket (how Jack Reacher got his last name). Not me! I overthink things to ∞.
The inspiration for Kate Devana was Kate Warne, the first female detective in the United States. She appears in Allan Pinkerton’s The Expressman and the Detective, a police procedural written in 1874, The Spy and the Rebellion, and other works by Pinkerton.
If you have never heard of Kate Warne, she was a badass. Imagine walking into Allan Pinkerton’s office (yes, Pinkerton Detective Agency fame) in the 1850s as a 24-year-old widow and telling him you can do his job better than he can. According to Pinkerton’s account:
At this time female detectives were unheard of. I told her it was not the custom to employ women as detectives, but asked her what she thought she could do.
She replied that she could go and worm out secrets in many places to which it was impossible for male detectives to gain access. She had evidently given the matter much study, and gave many excellent reasons why she could be of service.
I finally became convinced that it would be a good idea to employ her. True, it was the first experiment of the sort that had ever been tried; but we live in a progressive age, and in a progressive country. I therefore determined at least to try it, feeling that Mrs. Warne was a splendid subject with whom to begin.
Kate Warne had a very successful career at the Pinkerton Detective Agency. She performed intelligence work for the union during the civil war; she helped foil an assassination attempt on President Lincoln; and she headed Pinkerton’s female detective bureau, hiring and training junior female detectives.
Pinkerton describes her as, “rather a commanding person, with clear-cut, expressive features, and with an ease of manner that was quite captivating at times, she was calculated to make a favorable impression at once.” She continues to inspire professionals, embodying, “virtue, vigilance, and excellence.”
She also embodies badassery. Warne was born in Erin, New York. To uncover intelligence related to an attempt to assassinate Lincoln, she posed as a Southern secessionist in Baltimore, getting crucial details at confederate meetings. Pinkerton calls his female detectives “the most successful operators on my whole force.”
Commanding, clear-cut, expressive, but unassuming former intelligence officer describes Kate Devana well. When Dr. Rae Torres asks Kate, “Why do you pretend to be so dumb?” Kate responds, “Tactics 101, Rae. You can’t hit what you don’t see coming. People see what they want to see. I want them to see a dumbass, so they underestimate me.” Being underestimated puts a smile on Kate’s face.
Of course, I gave Kate a 2073 flair. She would be in the military (the Marines and the Space Force), trained as a tier one operator, with the cocky self confidence that goes with it. And her last name, “Devana” is the Slav goddess of wild nature, forests, hunting and the moon. A huntress on the moon seemed appropriate.
Kate Warne never got a movie, but at least her legacy lives on in a series that readers say will make “the next great series on Netflix,” and “just so satisfying to watch Kate punch, drop-kick and space the bad guys. Her dry wit and confidence kept a smile on my face the entire time.”
Allan Pinkerton’s books are easy-to-read police procedurals available for free on Amazon at the links above. I encourage you to follow the links above to the Smithsonian and elsewhere to read more about Kate Warne.
The Kate Devana series is a fun, easy read, too. 😁 Get it now 🔥—if you love badass heroines ❤️🔥 and drop-kicking bad, bad billionaires, that is. 🎯
I hope you are inspired to get out there and advocate for what you want, like Kate Warne, whether you buy my books or not.
The Orionids is available in Kindle Unlimited through Mid-march, and as an eBook, paperback, and hardback: https://books2read.com/theorionids
Total Eclipse is available in eBook, paperback, and as an audiobook by the end of Feb. Hardback is coming soon. https://books2read.com/totaleclipse
Audiobook trailer:
Get it now! The series will put a smile on your face.