Monsters, Murder, and Women’s Power in Victorian England

Interview with Suzannah Rowntree on Rewriting the Past

https://open.spotify.com/episode/3TyZL3e4YxSPOSTVqMmyCq?si=HeHtq3yDSnq_4p5JiwtKtA

About The Werewolf of Whitechapel

Murder, monsters…and a disreputable Victorian lady’s maid. A killer stalks the grimy streets of Whitechapel—but Scotland Yard seems determined to turn a blind eye. With one look at her best friend’s corpse, Liz Sharp already knows the truth: the killer is a werewolf.
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No one important will hold a werewolf accountable—after all, the monsters rule Europe. Certainly, no one will believe a werewolf victim like Liz: the very scars that make her determined to investigate Sal’s death also condemn her as the sort of female who’d sell her blood for easy money.

As it happens, Liz’s best hope for justice might well lie with her emotionally repressed employer, Princess May. Though the princess has connections with werewolf royalty, there’s no one else Liz can turn to. Certainly, she can’t risk trusting the irritatingly personable Inspector Short, who dogs her steps from the slums of Whitechapel to the palaces of St James.

But as corpses mount up, Liz discovers that no one is precisely who she thought: not Sal, not herself, and certainly not the werewolf.

Luckily, she has a few tricks hidden in the pockets of her trusty bloomers…

The Werewolf of Whitechapel can be purchased on Suzannah’s website https://payhip.com/SuzannahRowntreeAuthor. All of her other books are available on Amazon.

Historical fiction at it’s best!

I didn’t realize how much work went into The Werewolf of Whitechapel. When reading, it became abundantly clear that Rowntree knows a LOT about history during the set time period. This helps make what might have been an entertaining book wildly fascinating. Rowntree references people who really existed and gives them a story that has been left out of the historical context (or reimagines a life for some).

The book is difficult for me to read in that it is written with Victorian England as the setting. This made it difficult for me to focus, however, when I listened to the audiobook (narrated by Marian Hussey) it became so much more enjoyable. This is something to keep in mind if you have a difficult time with older language. The story and the characters more than made up for my inability to focus though. Miss Sharp is a fun character who is looking to solve her friend’s murder and figure out who is responsible for the scars on her face. She is wonderfully matched with Mae, a noble woman who is set to marry a boring lascivious man. Mae is a character in an of herself. She exemplifies the difficulties of noble women at the time. Miss Sharp has a potential love interest in the lanky detective Short.

There is murder, mystery, monstrous royalty, and a very subtle (blink and you’ll miss it) romantic subplot. I loved this book and am looking forward to reading the rest of Miss Sharp’s Monsters and Miss Dark’s Appiritions.