The characters in Van Reid's Moosepath League novels have a maddening concern for propriety, such that almost everything they say is prefaced by inner turmoil over whether they're being too forward. They're like characters in a Jane Austen novel, or from a Winnie-The-Pooh story. (As with Pooh, whenever anyone does speak, the comments are met with admiring grunts by friends stunned by the boldness.) The dithering and reticence take some getting used to, but they pay off in Reid's fourth Moosepath League novel, Mrs. Roberto, during moments when social barriers crumble and characters express their feelings truly and naturally. Because while Mrs. Roberto is like the other Moosepath League adventures–full of comic misunderstandings, parallel narratives, and scenes of mortal danger–the book is also sort of a love story. As always, late-19th-century Maine lawyer Tobias Walton meets with his companion/servant Sundry Moss and the three businessmen who make up the rest of the Moosepath League, and after some congenial fellowship, coincidences push them off in different directions. Walton and Moss travel to the country to be closer to the object of Walton's affection, Phileda McCannon, but the two men get waylaid at a farm trying to help a family with their sick pig. Meanwhile, the remaining Moosepathians mistakenly rush to the aid of lady parachutist Dorothea Roberto and find themselves accidentally involved in settling an underworld grudge while at the fore of an army of hobos. A freakish weather event brings everyone back together for the grand finale. Reid retains his gift for old-fashioned language and seamless potboiler plotting (though he lets some threads dangle, presumably to be picked up in an upcoming volume), but when the various romantic subplots start to come to a head, Mrs. Roberto moves past the realm of charming diversion. The latent emotion ever-present in Reid's characters and stories surfaces as some of his people make connections and some miss, and the book ends with an atypically strong, sure punch of joy and ache.