Written in 1864, this novel set in London depicts Victorian women under a new light thanks to "the initiative in works of progress" of the times, that challenged what was considered not to be "a woman's work".
In this novel the English police started employing women in their task force as undercover detectives. Here in the Victorian London we meet Mrs. Paschal, a widow in financial trouble, who "verging upon forty" reinvented herself and "became...