Friday Memes: Murder in Belgravia by Lynn Brittney

Happy Friday everybody!

Book Beginnings on Friday is now hosted by Rose City Reader. The Friday 56 is hosted at Freda's Voice. Check out the links above for the rules and for the posts of the participants each week. Don’t dig for your favorite book, the coolest, the most intellectual. Use the CLOSEST.

Beginning:

London, May 1915

Lady Harriet sat before him - composed and pale. Chief Inspector Beech detected a slight trembling in her hands. She was so young, in her early twenties, and yet possessed of an impressive gravity. He spoke softly and tried to be reassuring.

Friday 56:

"The murder room," said Sissy, when she realized the door wouldn't open and Elsie remarked that she wouldn't want to go in there anyway.

This week I am spotlighting Murder in Belgravia by Lynn Brittney, an historical mystery I got from NetGalley. Here is the description from Amazon:

A high-profile murder propels a unique crime-fighting team into the dark environs of London’s underworld―and on a terrifying quest to track a ruthless killer.

London, 1915. As World War I engulfs Europe, a special task force is formed in the affluent Mayfair district to tackle the city’s thorniest crimes against women. When the bobbies and Scotland Yard come up short, there’s only one telephone number to dial: Mayfair 100.

An aristocrat has been murdered, and his wife, a witness and possible suspect, will only talk to a woman. With the blessing of London’s Chief Commissioner, Chief Inspector Beech, a young man invalided out of the war, assembles a crew of sharp, intrepid, and well-educated women to investigate. But to get at the truth, Beech, Victoria, Caroline, Rigsby, and Tollman will venture into the the city’s seedy underbelly, a world where murder is only the first in a litany of evils.

Lynn Brittney’s Mayfair 100 series debut, Murder in Belgravia, is the darkly compelling story of a movement far ahead of its time, in an attempt to combat the prejudices against women then and now.