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Entertaining - parallel stories of Maud West's life and career and the author's sleuthing through archives to discover more about her, interspersed with lurid penny-dreadful style stories written by Maud West about her adventures as a lady detective during the Golden Age of Crime.
The first half hooked me more than later when the author was focused on tracking her family tree rather than Maud's work, but I found it engaging and readable.

This is a little gem.

Susannah Stapleton stumbles across mention of ‘London‘s Foremost Lady Detective, Maud West‘ and dives in to learn more. But Maud is an elusive character (‘character‘ being the word)…

It‘s a micro-history of the indomitable Maud‘s life and work, the story of lady detectives at the start of the 20th century, a social history of a rapidly changing world, women business owners, respectable

🎉 It‘s mammogram day! 🎉

I figured Maud would be good company, so I‘m back on the bus learning about blackmail, public toilets and a touch of xenophobia.

An update on Maud. She‘s a master of disguise, a very creative writer, in a mysterious marriage, and goodness only knows what she was up to during the war! I think she‘d get on great with Amelia Peabody.

Photo taken from the top deck of the bus (BUSES? Remember them??!), because we‘re in the throws of a rail strike. Got a bit of a shock when I got to the bus station tonight. They‘d shrunk it, turned it sideways and moved it up the road….

I was looking for something to listen to while I was cooking tea last night, and stumbled across this. Non-fiction, investigating the real-life story of Maud West, a detective of the Golden Age. And so far, it‘s fun!

First we have the story of Maud West - recounts of drug busts, blackmail, society parties, butlers and blackmail. With reliably unreliable narration from ' Maud“ herself we have a view of the darker, seedier side of life - particularly of mens control of women. Equally fascinating are of detection that Stapleton has undertaken to find out about Maud's life. Making visible her methods as a research historian was really inspiring. Loved it!

New book today - non fiction, about a historian researching deep into libraries, archives and book collections to find out about the real life gilded age sleuth Maud West. This bookmark seemed very appropriate! 😍

My book subscription book is perfect. The bookseller assigned to me always picks out the most brilliantly perfect books for me. And she even manages to match books to my decor! 🤣

Unwrapping my personalised book subscription from Mr Bs is a definite of highlight of every month. 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼

#adventure #newyearnewyou @Eggs

This is an absolute must-read if the title appeals to you even a little! Written almost like a detective story, the author takes you along as she researches the elusive Maud West, real-life “lady detective” in the early 20th century. I couldn‘t put it down. Aside from the fascinating life uncovered along the way, I enjoyed the vicarious research process immensely.

Just awesome. So good. Stapleton walks you through how she tracked down the details of Maud‘s life as well as telling you about the life of a real life lady detective in golden age London. Just brilliant. More books like this please.

An actual lady detective from the 1930s? This new non fiction book ticks so many of my reading boxes!