Tangled Web UK Review February 2008
A Most Dangerous Woman by
L M Jackson
hbk out April 07
Published by Heinemann
at £14.99
Lee Jackson is an authority on Victorian London, especially its seamier side and runs an interesting website on the subject. This book is his fifth crime novel set in that grimy, violent and hypocritical period and in keeping with the style of writing of the time, is a real ‘melodrama’.
The principal character is Sarah Tanner, an attractive woman in her thirties, who opens a coffee shop in Leather Lane, in a poor district of Holborn. She is something of a mystery to the costers and market-folk of the area, as she keeps herself to herself, with no clue as to her background. She has a faithful old retainer helping her in the café, who sticks to her through the many robust adventures that occur throughout the book – in fact, she is almost a female James Bond, surviving beatings and fires inflicted upon her. It turns out that she had been a woman “no better than she should have been”, having worked for an evil old crone who runs gaming salons and brothels, but had managed to escape and go straight. However, one of her former partners in crime gets murdered before her very eyes, soon after discovering her in her shop and she vows to avenge him. She falls foul of her previous employer when she tries to prevent a rich young woman from being married off to a villain and rescues an innocent young girl from a life of sin.
It is an exciting yarn, with never a dull moment and perfectly captures the dark, dismal atmosphere of London’s back streets, even if a suspension of disbelief at her hair-raising adventures is called for along the way.
(
Bernard Knight
ex Home Office Pathologist and author of the highly acclaimed Crowner John series)
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