By 8 they were on horseback and not tame well-mannered horses but any available even half broke horse carrying messages between the ranch house and cowboys in camps. As always when I read books set in this time period, I get frustrated with the limitations of being a woman during this time. In part this state of affairs stems from the sudden disappearance of her mother in 1886 when she was eighteen, and as the ten year anniversary approaches, Violet is determined to find out what happened to her. Dolby has an easy, engaging writing style that bounces along at a jaunty, exhilarating pace, embracing a wonderful concoction of intrigue, humour and delicious sexual tension. Her father, convinced that her mother has left them, pretends like she never existed, but Violet cannot.

But more than anything, she wants to find her mother Lily, who disappeared from Hastings Pier 10 years earlier. The knowledge came crashing over me on that mundane walk home, with the force of a giant wave, that I wanted nothing more in the whole wide world than to be a Lady Detective. Because Violet is a woman who knows her own mind - and her mind is on her mother, who went missing ten years earlier, vanishing from Hastings Pier without a trace.For a young lady of her time, Violet has to step outside the norm of proper behaviour but finds allies in surprising places.

But Violet feels she would know if her mother had died, and thinks she could be out there somewhere, maybe even needing help. Unsatisfied that the local authorities did a thorough investigation, she employs Frank Knight, a private detective. It’s a highly entertaining, joyful book and I’m so hoping to meet Violet again maybe as a fully fledged detective! The book highlights the era so well, the way women are treated in society and the audacity that men have. Violet was unmarried because she didn't want to be married, but her father tried every day to introduce her to a new suitor.After a school mate spends the holiday at the ranch she reports, "Agnes is not given to exaggeration. She then finds herself working for the second detective in town and decides that becoming a lady detective is what she would really like to do with the rest of her life. There’s a touch of Deanna Raybourn’s Veronica Speedwell Mystery series to this book, whilst fans of TV series Miss Scarlet and the Duke will find much to enjoy here with a similarly spirited team-up that evokes the will-they-wont-they relationship between Victorian detectives Eliza and Duke. Violet finds an old newspaper which leads her to Benjamin Blackthorn, a reluctant detective who has given up the trade in favour of selling furniture in the old, slightly seedy part of town.

We’re in late-Victorian Hastings on England’s south coast, with 28 year-old Violet Hamilton, who lives alone with her banker father since the unexplained disappearance of her mother ten years before.There's a lot of dry wit to be had here, and her descriptions of people and landscapes are marvelously evocative. I received a copy of No Life for a Lady by Hannah Dolby from NetGalley and Aria and Aries in exchange for an honest review. It’s the kind of book that you read too fast and race to the end, only to then wish you’d slowed down and savoured the pages more. Some of those investigations turn out to be real eye-openers for a sheltered young spinster: tailing a woman’s fiancé, breaking into a museum, visiting a brothel, and foiling a theft; but “I wanted to find my mother. Thank you, Netgalley and the publisher for allowing me an ARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Part rom-com, part mystery with a little comedy of manners thrown in, No Life for a Lady follows Violet Hamilton who lives with her father in the English seaside town of Hastings. Most purchases from business sellers are protected by the Consumer Contract Regulations 2013 which give you the right to cancel the purchase within 14 days after the day you receive the item. There’s a good deal of humour in this tale, as well as a cute twist, a very dramatic climax, and plenty of scope for further stories featuring this cast. Overall while I did enjoy the writing style and parts of the story, much of the book was slow and I found myself bored. But, she has other ambitions: to lead an exciting, independent life … with a career … perhaps as a lady typist or a lady detective.I especially loved seeing her dispatch her eager suitors with practiced ease while she wiggled her way into Mr. Violet unwittingly endears herself to readers with her no-nonsense attitude and sheltered naivety – two things that shouldn’t really go hand-in-hand but do, with hilarious and heart-warming results. Violet, though, is persistent and has soon managed to convince him that she can interview prospective female clients and even carry out investigative work for him. It is a book for those who want to meet the kind of people who made a home in the near desert country of the American Southwest. Born in 1874 on a primitive cattle ranch in what was to become New Mexico, Agnes Morley Cleaveland lived the reality of the "Wild West.