I’m a huge fan of Victoria Thompson’s Gaslight Mystery Series. My only complaint is that she can’t write them fast enough to suit me. So, when I learned that she had started a new series, I was excited. The first book in the series, City of Lies, was a great introduction to a completely different type of sleuth. Unlike Sarah Brent from the Gaslight series who is a midwife, Elizabeth Miles is a con-artist. Well, that’s enough to capture my attention.
In the second book in the series, Elizabeth Miles is determined to fit into high society. She has a few friends among the other suffragist, but she will need to figure out society rules and play her part if she intends to fit into her new life and marry, the honorable Gideon Blake. So far, Elizabeth has managed one friend among high society, a twice widowed suffragist, Priscilla Knight. However, Priscilla has problems of her own. Still mourning the loss of her beloved first husband, she doesn’t really remember marrying her second, Endicott Knight. After Endicott dies in another tragic accident, Priscilla learns that Knight has not only squandered all of his money, but in the nine months that he was married to Priscilla, he managed to go through her fortune as well, leaving her and her two daughters penniless. When Elizabeth and Gideon look into the matter, they discover that Knight had a secret which may have cost a lot more than money.
Elizabeth and Gideon both want justice for Priscilla and her daughters, but what is justice and who will administer it? As the two work to figure this out, Elizabeth learns that she and Gideon not only have different definitions of what constitutes justice, but they also have different ideas of how it should be meted out.
I’ll admit, I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about a grifter protagonist when I first started reading this series. I worried about connecting with the protagonist and wanting to stay interested in her struggles. However, I needn’t have worried. Thompson does an excellent job of showing Elizabeth’s vulnerabilities and struggles. Life for women in the early twentieth century was difficult, even if you were fortunate enough to have been born into or married into a wealthy family. Thompson is careful not to “condone” or “glamorize” the life of con-artists. In the same way, she is also fearless about exposing the societal rules which kept women oppressed. This book kept me flipping pages to find out what would happen next. I highly recommend this series.
Buy Link – Amazon