Nicole Kidman’s glossy television show Big Little Lies made Monterey look like an idyllic place to live, where wealthy Californians grapple with psychodramas in their glass-fronted multimillion-dollar mansions.
But in 1852 it was a grittier city, a stop-off for bandits on their way to gold-rush country, with muddy streets and vigilantes playing fast and loose with justice.
This makes it the perfect setting for Jane Smiley’s foray into cosy crime. Smiley, aged 73, is one of America’s most prolific authors. She won the 1992 Pulitzer prize for A Thousand Acres, her retelling of King Lear on a farm in 1990s Iowa, and flits between genres, writing everything from Norse history novels (The Greenlanders) and family sagas (the Last Hundred Years trilogy) to several books about her beloved horses.
Now she’s written a strangely jaunty murder mystery. The heroine of A Dangerous Business is a 20-year-old woman called Eliza, who turns detective when two young women disappear. Monterey is not a place where anyone cares about missing women with no money or families, so Eliza and her friend Jean decide to take matters into their own hands. They’re inspired by Jean’s stack of Edgar Allan Poe stories, modelling themselves on the author’s logical detective, Monsieur Dupin.
Despite the grim subject matter, it never feels heavy. Smiley doesn’t dwell on tragedy or tell us much about the dead women, preferring to bound along with the action and pack in as much plot as she can.
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Eliza has had a rough few years. When she was 18, her parents married her off to a stranger called Peter, 20 years her senior and a sexually demanding bully who “put it in her, whether she liked it or not, once or twice every day”. Luckily, he is shot dead in a bar brawl at the start of the story.
She’s rescued by a worldly wise woman called Mrs Parks, who runs a brothel and employs Eliza — giving her money of her own and a degree of freedom for the first time in her life.
It’s a rose-tinted depiction of prostitution. Eliza enjoys chatting with her clients — who include sailors, lawyers and the local judge. She’s hungry for knowledge and gleans what she can from them, discovering the looming prospect of civil war. Sometimes they bring her food or books (she is intimidated by the length of David Copperfield).
The sex is described clinically. Eliza copes by detaching herself from the emotional side of it, reminding herself it’s never as bad as it was with Peter. She develops a crush on one man, Lucas, who confides in her about how much he misses his dead wife.
But she knows that being alone in a room with strange men is not wise when there’s a killer on the loose. Mrs Parks warns: “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.” Suspense builds to a final scene so tense I held my breath.
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Smiley is a masterful writer, especially in the scenes where Eliza and Jean discuss their theories about the killer while galloping through the Californian countryside on horses like heroes in a western (Smiley couldn’t resist writing about horses — appropriately for a murder story, one is called Query). The mountains and pine trees give Eliza a sense of liberation.
Occasionally it feels rushed. Jean is the least believable character — she dresses in men’s clothes and works at a brothel for women, which is intriguing but not really explored. Perhaps Smiley is saving that for a sequel. What stays with me is Eliza’s resilience and just how much she is willing to put up with in order not to be beholden to a man.
A Dangerous Business by Jane Smiley
Abacus £16.99 pp224
