A DANGEROUS BUSINESS

Applying methods gleaned from a Poe story, a pair of 19th-century working girls put their heads together to fight a crime spree.

This strange little book from Pulitzer Prize winner Smiley combines a lurid plot involving the serial strangulation and stabbing of prostitutes in Monterey, California, in the early 1850s with a naïve, plainspoken style of narration and characterization that makes even scenes of copulation and gore seem sort of G-rated. This reflects the personality of the protagonist, Eliza Ripple, who is the proverbial whore with the heart of a Midwestern elementary school teacher. Married off by her parents at a tender age to a nasty older man who drags her from Kalamazoo to California and then gets shot in a bar fight, she winds up on her own, working at the brothel of kindly Mrs. Parks. As her new boss explains it, “Everyone knows that this is a dangerous business, but, between you and me, being a woman is a dangerous business, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.” Eager for companionship, she finds a friend in a cross-dressing colleague named Jean McPherson, who's employed at an establishment serving the women of the town, a possibly ahistorical narrative flourish which adds to the dreamlike quality of the narrative. As women continue to disappear, as corpses turn up in the countryside outside town, and as local law enforcement remains steadfast in its lack of interest, Eliza and Jean decide to emulate the methods of detective Dupin in a Poe story they've both enjoyed: "The Murders in the Rue Morgue." Eliza begins to observe and analyze her clients' behavior and the contents of their pockets and the various characters she runs into around town, with a focus on finding the murderer. Like their creator, Eliza and Jean have a love for horses, and the agreeability of their various rides into the countryside somehow makes a bigger impression than the gruesome finds they turn up.

An oddly pleasant little trot through Gold Rush–era California.