![]() ![]() ![]() She wrote “case study” pieces for a variety of tabloids, and filled them with tales of derring-do, often involving white slavers, cocaine smugglers, last-minute ocean liner voyages, and fisticuffs (or, just as often, the well-timed production of a small revolver). ![]() She opened a private investigation agency in London in 1905 and ran it until just before the Second World War, employing a small staff of hand-selected and rigorously trained men and women as well as undertaking large amounts of field work herself. Maud West did exist, although she wasn’t born under that name. “The game”, as she winningly puts it, “was afoot.” When she finds Maud West, her interest is piqued by the dearth of information. ![]() Susannah Stapleton comes across the figure of Maud West by chance, while idly pondering whether lady detectives had existed during the Golden Age of crime fiction she’s only thinking about this at all because of a historical missing-persons case that regular historical research had led her to. This rather marvelous book is a mashup of biography, social history, and what for a lack of a better phrase I might call “research thriller”. The Great Reread, #5: I Capture the Castle, by Dodie Smith.April 2023: superlatives for the rest of it.Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, by Harriet Jacobs.The Great Reread, #6: Annihilation, by Jeff VanderMeer. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |