She Be Damned, by MJ Tjia

An earlier and grittier version of Kerry Greenwood’s Phryne Fisher, set in 1860s London, Heloise Chancey has raised herself up from street prostitute to courtesan. She does a bit of acting and a bit of detecting on the side, but her primary function is to be beautiful and fashion forward. Heloise is hired to find a young woman who has run away from her disapproving family, but her search becomes an investigation of a serial killer of prostitutes in Waterloo. The novel is written in the first person present tense, which takes away much of the required tension when our intrepid heroine blunders into trouble – you already know she will get out of it. The insertion of asides by Heloise’s Eurasian maid are interesting in themselves but not germaine to the main story. They end up contributing to the background information on Heloise, but a huge chunk is left out, presumably to be continued in future tales of this not terribly competent Victorian lady detective.