A Dangerous Business

'I raced through this murder mystery' Good Housekeeping, 10 Books to Read Right Now!

'Smiley is a masterful writer' Sunday Times

'Outstanding. Her sentences are sublime' Roxane Gay

From a brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning and best-selling author: a rollicking murder mystery set in Gold Rush California, as two young prostitutes follow a trail of missing girls.

Monterey, 1851. Ever since her husband was killed in a bar fight, Eliza Ripple has been working in a brothel. It seems like a better life, at least at first. The madam, Mrs. Parks, is kind, the men are (relatively) well behaved, and Eliza has attained what few women have: financial security. But when the dead bodies of young women start appearing outside of town, a darkness descends that she can't resist confronting. Side by side with her friend Jean, and inspired by her reading, especially by Edgar Allan Poe's detective Dupin, Eliza pieces together an array of clues to try to catch the killer, all the while juggling clients who begin to seem more and more suspicious.

Eliza and Jean are determined not just to survive, but to find their way in a lawless town on the fringes of the Wild West - a bewitching combination of beauty and danger - as what will become the Civil War looms on the horizon.

As Mrs. Parks says, 'Everyone knows that this is a dangerous business, but between you and me, being a woman is a dangerous business, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise . . .'

Smiley is a masterful writer, especially in the scenes where Eliza and Jean discuss their theories about the killer while galloping through the Californian countryside on horses like heroes in a western Sunday Times
I raced through this murder mystery about two young prostitutes who turn detective to catch the killer of a trail of missing girls Good Housekeeping, 10 Books to Read Right Now!
There's a breezy charm to this pleasurable tale, and Smiley captures something of both its historical setting and the timeless dangers that come with being a woman Mail on Sunday, The Best New Fiction
Perhaps her most provocative and engaging novel yet . . . A Dangerous Business is a slim but thrilling tale, and Smiley once again strikes a perfect balance by combining a sex-positive story and a classic mystery in a progressive way Shondaland
Fans of murder-mystery historical fiction will find lots to spike their attention in Jane Smiley's A Dangerous Business, set in Gold Rush California in the early 1850s...When the dead bodies of young women begin appearing on the outskirts of town, Eliza and her friend and fellow sex worker Jean decide to track down the serial killer. Smiley vividly captures the perils of their endeavours, which highlight how being a woman is "a dangerous business" in general Independent
Now here's something you don't come across every day: a mash-up of a Western, a serial-killer mystery and a feminist-inflected tale of life in a bordello. But Jane Smiley's A Dangerous Business is all that - and, amazingly, it works . . . Smiley smoothly melds three distinct narratives into one without breaking a sweat Washington Post
Jane Smiley paints such vivid imagery with her language that it's easy for her novels to conjure memories of various movies and television . . . the book remains Smiley through and through, with clarity, deceptive wit and moral compass working at the service of a larger idea . . . A Dangerous Business is as much a tale of self-actualization as it is a murder mystery. Being a woman may be a dangerous business, but for Eliza and Jean, that just makes it more fun to push against societal boundaries USA Today
An affecting account of a young woman coming into her own . . . Smiley is a Balzac of the wide open spaces . . . This is no small thing, we have Eliza and Jean. Their pluck, their grit, most of all their ineffable belief in the power of books, make A Dangerous Business matter Wall Street Journal
Deftly constructed . . . Smiley has created several engaging characters. She vividly recalls the political uproar of the 1850s . . . Her wry sense of humor is a bright thread . . . A Dangerous Business achieves the goal of all worthy historical novels: opening a window to the past, forcing comparisons to the present, raising unsettling questions about how much has really changed Los Angeles Times
Edgar Allan Poe meets California gold country Vanity Fair
Smiley clearly knows her way around a story. A Dangerous Business brims with delightful little touches . . . Smiley's ability to deliver salient social commentary wrapped in such an inviting murder mystery shows that just because the game's afoot, doesn't mean you need to bludgeon your readers with criminal minds, blood, and guts . . . 'Being a woman is a dangerous business' [is] the novel's real message, and it is one that is as resonant in the wildness of Smiley's 1850s Wild West as it is in today's United States Boston Globe

Jane Smiley is the author of numerous novels, including A Thousand Acres, which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, and the Last Hundred Years trilogy: Some Luck, Early Warning, and Golden Age. She is also the author of several works of non-fiction and books for young adults. A member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, she has received the PEN Center USA Lifetime Achievement Award for Literature. She lives in Northern California.

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