Lissa Evans, author of Old Baggage and Crooked Heart Deliciously entertaining, meticulous and affectionate. A brilliant literary sleuth tracks down a real one, uncovering a flabbergasting hidden life along the way. Sayers, Parisian gangsters and Continental blackmailers, The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective is a portrait of a woman ahead of her time and a deliciously salacious glimpse into the underbelly of 'good society' during the first half of the twentieth century. With walk-on parts by Dr Crippen and Dorothy L. Who was Maud? And what was the reality of being a female private detective in the Golden Age of Crime? Interweaving tales from Maud West's own 'casebook' with social history and extensive original research, Stapleton investigates the stories Maud West told about herself in a quest to uncover the truth. And - as Susannah Stapleton reveals - she was a most unreliable witness to her own life. in order to thrive in a class-obsessed and male-dominated world. Her exploits grabbed headlines throughout the world but, beneath the public persona, she was forced to hide vital aspects of her own identity. Maud West ran her detective agency in London for more than thirty years, having starting sleuthing on behalf of society's finest in 1905. The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective: Secrets and Lies in the Golden Age of Crime
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