The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective

Secrets and Lies in the Golden Age of Crime

By: Susannah Stapleton

Narrated by: Clare Wille, Susannah Stapleton

If you are susceptible to Miss Marple and Harriet Vane you must read The Adventures of Maud West. You will never know the difference between fact and fiction again. Jill Paton Walsh, author of the Peter Wimsey/Harriet Vane mysteries

Maud West ran her detective agency in London for more than thirty 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 twentieth century.

Critic reviews

Terrific ... A brilliant literary sleuth tracks down a real one, uncovering a flabbergasting hidden life along the way. (Lissa Evans, author of Old Baggage and Crooked Heart)

Deliciously entertaining, meticulous and affectionate ... Criminally good. I loved it. (Mel McGrath, author of Give Me the Child and The Guilty Party)

A powerhouse of a book ... The Adventures of Maud West, Lady Detective is, as one suspects Maud herself was, sweet, and wonderful company, and absolutely determined to discover the truth. (Judith Flanders, author of The Invention of Murder and the Sam Clair mysteries)

Maud West is a gloriously English eccentric - think Miranda Hart meets Margaret Rutherford - brought to vigorous life by present day sleuth Susannah Stapleton. (Sean O'Connor, author of Handsome Brute)

Susannah Stapleton’s dogged sleuthing of Maud’s own complicated, messy, spunky life reveals the wider story of a little-explored sliver of life between the wars. I loved it. (Kate Colquhoun, author of Mr Briggs' Hat and Did She Kill Him?)

If you are inclined to regard the “Golden Age” detective stories as obviously a fantasy form — and never more fantastic than when the sleuth is a woman, Susannah Stapleton’s book will astound you. “Maud West” was a real woman detective, but her story blurs the margin between possible truth and impossible invention till your head spins. If you are susceptible to Miss Marple and Harriet Vane you must read The Adventures of Maud West. You will never know the difference between fact and fiction again. (Jill Paton Walsh, author of the Lord Peter Wimsey-Harriet Vane novels)

Compulsively absorbing . . . delightfully well written, with both sympathy and empathy; it is jaunty, engaging and witty without being arch. A triumph. (Lucy Lethbridge)

[A] charming light-hearted investigation into the life of Maud West, a lady detective. A sort of “Miss Marple on the trail of Miss Marple” . . . frank and funny. (Ysenda Maxtone-Graham)

Intriguing

Impressive . . . more fascinating than any fictional detective story

Highly entertaining

Susannah Stapleton’s erudite but hugely entertaining debut is a true-life detective story about a true-life detective . . . [an] exhilarating eye-opener of a book

Although Stapleton does not engage in much literal leg-work – she is able to do a lot of her research in her pyjamas – this account of her pursuit of the will-o’-the-wisp-like Maud through the maze of online archives and registries is utterly enthralling, often even thrilling

Shot at in Paris, blackmailed in Bloomsbury: the self-promoting cases, and many faces, of a fearless female sleuth . . . breezy

This romp through the life of one of Britain’s first female detectives sets out to solve one central mystery: who was Maud West? Her story is told in tantalising detail by Susannah Stapleton

Fascinating

A gripping read

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.