The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective

Susannah Stapleton’s compulsively absorbing book about Maud West centres on a woman who was a splendid one-off and yet somehow entirely of her age. Maud West, with her magnifying glass and her box of disguises, could have been a character in a Dorothy L Sayers novel – and in fact, she seemed to have lived her life as though it were a continually unfolding story, complete with cloaks and daggers. Stapleton interweaves what she has discovered about West herself with fascinating details about the new freedoms available to women and the accompanying social anxieties.

Source: literaryreview.co.uk