A Dangerous Business

Few know that one of Jane Smiley’s earliest works, published in 1984, was a mystery called Duplicate Keys set in contemporary Manhattan. Here, Smiley returns to crime fiction, although now we are in a completely different locale: Monterey in the mid-19th century. Eliza Ripple moves from Kalamazoo to Monterey with her husband, who promptly gets killed in a bar fight, leaving her broke and unemployed—but hardly sad at her piggish husband’s demise. Days later she’s recruited by Mrs. Parks to join her brothel, and with no other resources, agrees. Mrs. Park runs a tight ship: the women see only one or two clients a day; have physical protection, in the form of a bouncer; and are able to ban men they deem risky. Throughout the book, it’s women who keep each other safe, whether through friendships or the environments they create. And for the first time in her life, Eliza has financial security. All is as well as can be expected until Eliza realizes that young women in Monterey are disappearing, and discovers their bodies in a creek outside of town. She pairs up with her buddy Jean, also a sex worker and quite likely a lesbian—she’s got a terrific wardrobe of menswear—and the two women use every resource they have, from their clients to Edgar Allen Poe’s stories of detective C. Auguste Dupin, to discover who is murdering the women of Monterey. Smiley takes time to describe the wild west and the magical beauty that surrounds her characters. But ever present is the vulnerability that women face and the need to take matters into their own hands.