Daring Duplicity

Stetson is a Victorian Englishwoman who refuses to live by the rules polite society sets for women. Shunned by people who find her self-reliance unsettling, she invents a fictitious employer and founds a detective agency of her own. Her sharp eye, talent for slipping into disguises, and reasoning modeled on Sherlock Holmes soon draw a steady stream of cases that resist easy answers. All the while, she is trying to fit a private life around dangerous work. Stetson fears she may never meet a woman who shares her interests and outlook, yet she refuses to give up on finding true love, even though the search carries its own risks. Subtitled Adventures of a Lesbian Victorian Detective, this is the first volume of the Wellington Mysteries, a collection of five connected novellas set in London. Each novella presents a self-contained mystery, while the larger story follows Stetson's life from one case to the next. The question running through the collection is whether her daring exploits will end in tragedy or in triumph.