Writing the novel itself may have been dangerous business for Smiley for she writes about a prostitute in California in the 1850s with more sexual detail than one would expect in a Jane Smiley novel. Again, there's that versatility.
Eliza goes to Monterey with her husband soon after the Gold Rush. She was forced into marrying a man she doesn't love and who doesn't treat her well, and so she doesn't mourn when he is shot and killed. But then, how will she make a living?
She is recruited by Mrs. Parks, one of the madams in a town with relatively few women. Eliza takes the job and comes to like it, discovering that most of her customers are much nicer than her husband. And they always go home afterward, while her savings pile up.
But then the bodies of other women in this same "dangerous business" begin showing up, brutally stabbed. There is not much law in Monterey at that time, and nobody seems to take the murders seriously. Eliza and her new friend, Jean, another prostitute who specializes in female clients, begin reading detective stories written by Edgar Allan Poe. They decide to discover the murderer themselves.
This is a short novel, barely 200 pages, but it remains fascinating every step of the way.
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