The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective

Secrets and Lies in the Golden Age of Crime

De: Susannah Stapleton

Narrado por: Susannah Stapleton, Clare Wille

If you are susceptible to Miss Marple and Harriet Vane you must listen to The Adventures of Maud West.

You will never know the difference between fact and fiction again.

Maud West ran her detective agency in London for more than 30 years, having started sleuthing on behalf of society’s finest in 1905. Her exploits grabbed headlines throughout the world but, beneath the public persona, she was forced to hide vital aspects of her own identity in order to thrive in a class-obsessed and male-dominated world. And – as Susannah Stapleton reveals – she was a most unreliable witness to her own life. Who was Maud? And what was the reality of being a female private detective in the Golden Age of Crime?

Interweaving tales from Maud West’s own ‘casebook’ with social history and extensive original research, Stapleton investigates the stories Maud West told about herself in a quest to uncover the truth. With walk-on parts by Dr Crippen and Dorothy L. Sayers, Parisian gangsters and Continental blackmailers, The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective is both a portrait of a woman ahead of her time and a deliciously salacious glimpse into the underbelly of ‘good society’ during the first half of the 20th century.

©2019 Susannah Stapleton (P)2019 Macmillan Publishers International Ltd

informative and fascinating

was a great listen as the contents covers the whole era, and as you listen about the Lady Detective, you also get to know so much about the times, the city, the atmosphere she lived in. Moreover, it's especially engaging for a woman, since in those times not every woman could work and was taken seriously. having said all the above, I still think i would enjoy it even more if i was reading as at times it was quite hard for me to concentrate and not to get distracted.