The Dagger Dance by Elizabeth Bailey

1793 England. The Lady Fanshawe alias Tillie. On the way to solving another murder/s. Nothing I like more. Vintage mystery murder detection, add to that the English aristocracy yes to all that. Lady Fan has been unwittingly drawn into an investigation. A enslaved woman, beloved of Hemp (very close to Lady Fan) appeals to her as his love Doro has been detained in the murder of a rather unpleasant Lord. His wife, upto the date of his murder who detested him, wanted him out of the way, and was on the verge of leaving him for another younger man - now professes distraught at his death. She deliberately leaves Doro her slave to the fate of imprisonment and hanging and pretends that nothing has happened. It is upto Lady Fan along with her husband who ably supports her to find out the ramifications of why the man was killed, by whom and to get Doro out of the clutches of the law. Beautifully told, very descriptive of both life in London - the slums of London at the time seem horrible and unimaginable and how people survived there is totally unreal. It however gives one an idea of what people did to survive and survive they did. A side story in this which was interesting but only added a bit of variation was the story of orphan Pretty and the position in the Fanshawe household. Sent by Sapere Books for an unbiased review, courtesy of Netgalley.