a well detailed and researched book on the topic of women in murder mysteries of the Victorian age. If I was doing academic research this would be a good resource.

Sara Lodge's The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective is a meticulously researched exploration of the overlooked contributions of women to 19th-century policing. Lodge brings to light the courageous and complex roles female “searchers” and proto-detectives played in Victorian Britain—often operating in dangerous and unacknowledged circumstances.

Through vivid storytelling and historical anecdotes, Lodge recounts how these women's unique positions in society allowed them to infiltrate criminal networks, conduct sting operations, and testify effectively in court. Women like Ann Lovsey and Elizabeth Joyes shine as examples of working-class women who transcended societal expectations to perform pivotal law enforcement duties.

This engaging account not only corrects historical oversights but also links these pioneers to modern conversations about gender and representation in policing. While occasionally dense with detail, the book’s combination of academic rigor and narrative flair makes it both informative and compelling.

A must-read for history enthusiasts and advocates for recognizing women’s contributions to male-dominated fields.

Absolutely fascinating! Sara Lodge has certainly done her detective research. I had no idea that women had played such a role, not just as private detectives and agents, but also as part of the police, in Victorian times. This book also shines a light on the history of women as seen through the law. It read like a novel in places, truly page-turning. I think anyone with an interest in crime, true crime, women's history, Victorian times, and detectives in general will love this book.

This book was eye-opening on so many levels. I have always had an interest in Sociology and Criminology, with a particular interest in Feminism. This book was a definite me book that had me gawping from the get go. The book covered many aspects of crime and the women who were at the centre of catching the criminals and bringing them to justice. This book gave voices to the women who risked their own lives to protect their community both in reality and through works of literature and theatre.

They were essential in Victorian Britain at catching criminals where men would not succeed, due to the fact they were men.
However, no matter women’s brilliance in catching criminals, the inequalities were dominant with little to no work stability and pay. In addition for women not even receiving acknowledgement for how vital they were at catching criminals and the false idea that women were unsuited for detective work.

This book was insightful and really made me realise how ignorant I was about women in history. This book only enforces the power society has at reconstructing ideas of what women were like and what they were capable of.

However, throughout its pages, this book elaborates the true power of literature by breaking the societal mould and offering an alternative society where women's capabilities are acknowledged. This book only affirms that women were and are: strong, clever, bold, brave and frankly brilliant!

This book gave me chills. It’s exciting, moving, harrowing, entertaining, and enlightening. Sara Lodge carried out a fascinating, deep-dive investigation to find the female detectives who’d gone missing.

It’s a revealing book that celebrates the courage, intelligence, physicality, wit, social skills, resourcefulness–and in certain cases, acting abilities–of these early detectives. I appreciated her empathy for victims, and that she exposes the context of women's legal and financial status in regard to being prey to men.

Lodge shows that in contrast with their privileged fictional counterparts, these early detectives were largely working class. Tasks such as searching female prisoners and going undercover to expose petty criminals fell to women, with or without pay.

Some of the early roles of women in police stations evolved into paid, yet still largely unacknowledged jobs. Fortunately, Lodge is tenacious and diligent. She unearthed a wealth of contemporary newspaper accounts that give telling glimpses of early female detectives, ranging from women catching criminals on their own and women suffering injuries while performing their duties, to women presenting results of their undercover surveillance in court. With divorce law reform fueling sn increase in private agencies, women became essential for gathering information in places men could not easily go.

There's a connection between the employment of female detectives in London and the ‘Jack the Ripper’ murders.

This delightfully readable exploration of women as detectives is centered in London, with some material from other places. It includes the often uneasy yet fascinated responses to female detectives expressed in newspapers, periodicals, literature, and theater. The illustrations and photos enhance the colorful narrative. Influential actresses in trouser roles as 'lady detectives' embodied the true-to-life gender-presentation fluidity used by women on both sides of the law. Some actresses became detectives.

I highly recommend Sara Lodge's groundbreaking book. It's an excellent choice for aficionados of history, London, gender studies, women's studies, literature, social sciences, and for general readers alike.

Thank you, Yale University Press, for the digital review copy via NetGalley for consideration. These are solely my own opinions. I'll add the link to my review on TikTok.

don’t think this book was meant to be read outside of academia, it’s a little dry and very exhaustive so very repetitive with long lists to make a single point.

It’s a very well-researched book about Victorian female detectives though, an era that invented the profession as a whole and which captured the imagination of mystery writers. Wives of policemen (mostly, almost all of these women had pre-existing ties to the police force) assisted them in various ways (mostly recovering stolen property, watching illegal activities until the police had enough evidence to make an arrest, etc). This book also touches on female criminals and their living conditions in jail (appalling stuff).

It’s an interesting read but I think it could have been a lot shorter. There’s a very extensive bibliography and copious notes if you’d like to read more on the subject.

My endless thanks to NetGalley and Yale University Press for this ARC!

Well-written, well-researched, and a fascinating topic. This book explores Victorian Female Detectives in media and in real life, and their role in detective fiction and on the profession. It was an interesting book that helps to complicate the legacy of gender roles in the Victorian period.

This book looks at both real and fictional female detectives in Victorian Britain. The author looked at specific examples of the female detective in fiction (both writing and theater) and commented on how these women reflected on the time period they were written in and how they were a commentary on their times, too. The author also examined real life examples of women who solved crimes or worked for private inquiry agencies or the official police force and how the reality contrasted with the fictional depictions.

While the book covered some details about the type of work these women really did, a lot of the book (especially near the end) was more commentary on the social context. This was interesting, but I was hoping for more information on what they really did--which, apparently, was often obscured by a tendency to glamorize the job to fit the fictional action heroine stereotype. Overall, I'd recommend this book to those who want to know more about women detectives in the mid- to late-1800s in Britain.

(Thank you to Yale University Press for providing an eARC of the book.)

This was an informative and fascinating read. I enjoyed looking at the images of old newspaper articles, advertisements, portraits, and drawings that accompanied old printed stories. It was well-researched and provided insight into women's detective work in the Victorian Era, whether as independent investigators, detectives for agencies, or various roles for the police. The book also contrasted the realities of female detectives with how they were portrayed in female detective stories during that era. Real female detectives were working-class women who sometimes faced harsh, even dangerous, environments when they worked undercover.

While the book provided great information, it repeated itself several times. Some sentences also felt disconnected, jumping from one topic to another and then going back.

DNF at 39%

The Mysterious Case of the Victorian Female Detective dives into the relatively unknown history of the women who worked as detectives during the Victorian age. Most folks are familiar with figures like Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock and Edgar Allan Poe's Dupin but Lodge points out the long history of the working class women and the literary heroines who did the same work, mostly thanklessly. As someone who isn't super familiar with the Victorian age, it's an interesting historical investigation.

Unfortunately, as I should have expected given the academic publisher, the writing style for this is quite dense and frequently repetitive. It's really better suited to those with an academic or deep personal interest in the subject. As someone who's mildly interested in the subject, I just didn't really have the patience for the repetition and dense writing style. Still, it has good information in there so if it is a subject you're deeply interested in, it's worth picking up.

This book offers a deep and insightful look into the history of female detectives in the Victorian era, blending real-life accounts with literary analysis. The research is thorough and provides a fresh perspective on how these characters and real women helped shape societal views on gender and class. While the academic nature of the book may not appeal to everyone, it is a highly rewarding read for those interested in history, literature, and feminist themes. The only downside was the unexpected spoilers, but overall, it was an engaging and thought-provoking experience.

I love mysteries. This book was well written. I love a good female detective as well especially in times where they were not common. This book is a must read if you like Sherlock Holmes and solving mysteries.

The topic of this book was niche and specific, and one that I was super interested in and happy to go down the author’s rabbit hole. It was clearly a passion project and well-researched, which made it really interesting to read. It was definitely informative and left me thinking, and the more casual narrative voice made it digestible and enjoyable. Weaving in real life female detectives and fictional ones was also a nice, multifaceted approach.

Thank you to Netgalley and Yale University Press for this arc. This did not influence my review.

This is a nonfiction book about the history of female detectives in the Victorian period. While some might find the style of this book a bit boring due to how research heavy it is, I personally really enjoyed it. This is definitely for someone who is actually interested in this topic.

Personally, I had very little knowledge on real Victorian detectives and only knew about it from my obsession with mystery novels as a child. In reality, it seems that being a detective in that era was not as glamorous or exciting as I thought.

First we learn about those in real life. These female detectives were not as sensational as the ones in the novels, and sometimes were cogs in the system which oppressed their sex. These were real working class women who caught petty crimes; mainly done by other low income women. In fact, they did it without proper payment or even credit. However, their contributions to the police force did indeed revolutionise the way women were portrayed in the arts.

We move on to the literary heroes of Victorian novels. These women are there for a purpose; female detectives served as a vehicle for “revenge” against e.g. domestic violence. They were characters still very much based on reality however contained elements that allowed them to be main character material. Female detectives were thus the way for the Victorian masses to express their frustrations with society. In many cases, this was a way to point out the lack of rights of married women and the abuse and mistreatment they suffered at the hands of the men in their lives. The book goes into great details about “domestic tyranny”. One could consider these as real feminist texts, as they did oppose the views of women being quiet and malleable. Many novels feature lower class women as detectives who showed themes of class and gender disparity.

Then goes into the theatrical. Melodramas and plays! These were much more interesting to me as this concept of a female detective turns dramatic. In thrillers and mysteries that featured these women, they were crass and gunslingers. They were crossdressers, actresses and helpers in an unjust society. In fact, this would be both inaccurate and accurate to real life female detectives.

While originally I thought this book would focus on British detectives, it also focused on American and Irish. In fact, some of the later content would be very American heavy and the impact of some of the (somewhat fabricated) female detectives had on detective fictions and feminist movements could be seen even across the pond.

I do not believe you need to be someone with previous knowledge on history or English literature. The book was not the easiest to follow but definitely not the hardest. The most knowledge one would need would be perhaps high school English literature due to the discussions on literary devices.

Overall an enlightening experience for me as I had not thought about the societal aspects of detective fiction or just women in general in detective fiction. One thing I would like to note though is the spoilers of multiple books and plays that one should be aware of. While it was an important part in understanding the bigger picture around the concept of a female detective, it was wholly unexpected. However I do not think it is a big deal.

I was very excited when I learnt about this book and as an academic I love seeing fellow academics writing books for the broad public because knowledge shouldn’t be hidden behind difficult to understand sentences. This book is entertaining and informative and I loved that it focused on real life women and literary figures too. The balance is really great and as a reader you can feel her passion for her topic. Highly recommend.

I loved this book. It was just the right balance between informative and entertaining, and it was great to hear the stories of early female detectives and some of the cases that they worked on. As a Librarian, I can appreciate all of the different resources the author must have used in order to tell this story so fully and in such an accessible way. A brilliant book that I will definitely be buying a copy of!

Very well written and well researched. As Sara Lodge states in the book, the history of female detectives - and what they means in reality and in fiction - is something I took great interest in. I enjoyed the historical and literary analysis that Lodge takes as her approach in this subject.

The Mysterious Case... is a fascinating history of the Victorian female detective - both the fictional heroines and their real-life counterparts. As a fan of historical mysteries and golden age crime, this provided some interesting and little-known historical context to many of my favourite stories.

Lodge has packed this book full of examples from stage, page, court records, newspapers and more. Some of the close-reading gets a little repetitive after a while: the reader is more interested in the case studies than any analysis of them. But Lodge's enthusiasm for her subject is contagious, making this a thoroughly enjoyable read.

Female detectives in the Victorian era only exist in books. That's how you think. But actually it wasn't all that unusual for women to work in this area. Often as loyalty testers, but also in numerous other cases, women have successfully worked as investigators. This book provides numerous exciting and very well-researched insights into this very special topic. Contemporary illustrations provide information about the image that people had of female detectives at the time. This is sometimes amusing, but it also reflects a certain skepticism towards such independent women. The book therefore offers crime history, female power and historical context. A convincing book on every level that deserves attention.

This was a fun and fascinating read, looking at female detectives in the Victorian era, mostly in Britain, both real - and far more mundane than one might imagine - and fictional, the latter with a particular (and interesting) emphasis on theater presentations. Lodge has an easy-to-read writing style and while the tone of the book is academic, that rarely bogs the narrative down. That said, especially towards the end, Lodge's focus shifts to the US and particularly New York, and where she provided a lot of background information and context for her English female detectives, that feels generally lacking for the US. (Although Lodge does divert into a discussion of female detectives and their connections to female spies during the Civil War in popular literature, which was interesting.)

Overall, a very easy to read and informative work of history; I enjoyed it a ton.