Heloise Chancey is not a prostitute. She is an actress and a courtesan who helps solve mysteries on the side. And that's why she's posing as a prostitute, in the hopes that she can help figure out why these women are turning up dead, all of their sexual organs removed. It becomes personal when her maid is accused of the murders.
The book is as much (if not more) about Heloise's exploration of her past as it is about solving the murders. There is an exploration of what it was like to be a courtesan in London, the views of abortions in those times (touches on today), and racism.
I was sort of surprised to learn that M. J. Tjia was a woman. The first person point of view felt a bit uncomfortable, as though it rang a false note. At first I thought was a gender thing but I think it may be more of a time period thing. Heloise seems very much like a modern woman who was plunked into the 1800s. Not that that couldn't have existed, but it felt very odd. And it kept me disconnected from both the character and the book. I actually connected more with the Li Leen interjections than with Heloise.
I'm not sure who to recommend this book (novella? It's not even 200 pages). I feel like some people might enjoy it but it was not a good book for me. I would give it two stars but it was an interesting enough book that it made it up to two and a half.

This book came out August 1

1863 and courtesan and private investigator Heloise Chancey is employed to trace a young lady in Waterloo, London. During her search she discovers that prostitutes are being horrendously killed and decides to discover the guilty party.
A very readable book, a good mystery. Though I do like to become attached to the characters in any book I am reading this didn't really happen here, which maybe because of her occupation. It may take more books for that to happen.

This ticked a lot of boxes for me - a Victorian (tick) murder mystery (tick) featuring a strong female protagonist (tick) and an exploration of the seedier side of 1860s London (tick).

The plot follows Heloise Chancey (a courtesan) who is well-placed to investigate the murder of prostitutes in Waterloo, London; she can move in both 'high' and 'low' society and is streetwise and tough enough to survive the unpleasant surroundings thanks to her rather chequered past (which we get hints at throughout the novel). Although Heloise is independently wealthy and living in Mayfair, she has no trouble mixing with the prostitutes, beggars and domestic servants of Waterloo. She's an interesting character, although I'd like to see her given more emotional depth in future if this is the start of a series.

I found this book so hard to put down, although some of it is quite distasteful; the murders are reminiscent of Jack the Ripper's crimes in that the women are mutilated, which is a bit stomach-churning. However, it moved at a good pace and there were plenty of twists and turns to keep a reader interested until the end. I thought there were some very clever touches and enough menace to keep me turning pages way into the night to check that everything would be fine!

This is an engaging and lively historical crime novel; I really hope that Heloise will appear in more books in future as I think there is plenty of potential here.

This book amazed me. I was checking my notes in preparation for writing this review and they're useless. They're full of "wow" and "amazing" and "that was very clever".

This book is just that.

The first thing that struck me is that, unusually for fiction, it's written in the first person. That's tough. Generally what happens is that after the 457th 'I did a thing, then I did another thing', the reader wants to gouge their eyes out with a rusty spoon. That is emphatically not the case with this book. The writing is masterful. The plotting and story progression are organic and seamless. The things that happened felt natural and not contrived. I just really REALLY enjoyed reading this book.

I read a ton and a half of mysteries. I consider myself pretty good at 'whodunnit'. I had -no- clue with this one. I was SO far off base and all I can say is "Well played, Ms. Tjia, well played"! There were plot twists and payoffs up until literally the last paragraphs.

The historical London and environs are perfectly drawn. The environments are well described (smells, sights, good and bad all together) along with historically accurate representations of sexual mores and attitudes in different strata of society.

A caveat, however. The narrative is quite gritty and graphic in places. There's a fair bit of sex (not in a nice way) and murder and historically awful stuff included. If you're looking for a nice tea shop cozy mystery, this is not it.

I'm going to put this author (M.J. Tjia) on my perma-update list on Amazon/Goodreads.

Five huge stars with glitter on top.

Disclosure: I received an ARC at no cost from the author/publisher.

This was quick little jaunt into the haunting world of Victorian Jack the Ripper London, although something left me a little lacking.

Heloise is a courtesan with a side-line in detective work. Employed by Sir Thomas, alongside her Chinese handmaid Amah, Heloise accepts the task of locating a missing girl in the bowls of Waterloo. However, she’s soon embroiled in a deeper mystery which will put herself and her companions in greater danger, as she finds herself in the world of Jack the Ripper. I found this an interesting concept for a novel. I’m often drawn to novels that revolve around Victorian London and Jack the Ripper, and this was a different take on a familiar story. I liked the girls that Heloise meets in the brothels, as well as Henry – although I felt he could have been developed more. Most of the men actually seemed very similar, and I often felt myself loosing track of who was who, as they all had comparable personalities.

This also felt like a sequel. At several points there are implied events that have happened in Heloise’s past that read like they should have occurred in a previous novel – such as the history with her benefactor and previous investigations with Sir Thomas. At times I found this disorientating, and meant that I never really grew attached to the character of Heloise as I had no emotional attachment to her back story. That said, she has the potential to be a great heroine, full of sass and sympathy for her peers and others.

Whoever wrote the synopsis for this should have perhaps omitted the section about Amah, as her implication in the murders is only implied 70% of the way into the novel and this spoiled it slightly for me as I was expecting this development. This meant for the majority of the story, I knew what was going to happen, and there were no surprises. This perhaps also spoiled the ending as I didn’t naturally build up any kind of suspense.

Having said all this, I did enjoy the atmosphere that was created by the author. She was able to create a believable Victorian London in my imagination, and for this I was very appreciative. Too often, authors can get carried away with developing their novel’s landscape into something that barely resembles the original world they were intending to create. Thankfully, this was not the case in this.

Also, the cover for this is stunning and something that I would definitely display with pride in my home. It's beautiful.

Altogether, although a light read, I found this suitably lacking in enough areas that I couldn’t enjoy this as much as I wanted to.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Legend Press for an advance copy of She Be Damned, the first novel to feature courtesan Heloise Chancey in 1863 London.

Heloise has earned enough money to live a financially comfortable life and is able to indulge her hobbies - stage acting and some detection work for private investigator Sir Thomas Avery. She is interested when Sir Thomas asks her to look for Eleanor Carter a young lady in an interesting condition who has run away from home and may have become the victim of a serial killer who is butchering pregnant prostitutes.

I enjoyed She Be Damned as it has a very readable style which draws the reader in to Heloise's lifestyle, although I'm less sure about said lifestyle. The plot involves Heloise gathering information by visiting various seedy haunts, most of which remind her of her past and how far she has come. It is well put together and does not pull its punches in either the dreadful poverty or hypocrisy of the Victorian age.

It is interesting that Ms Tjia chooses to make her protagonist a courtesan as it gives her a lot of scope in covering the many facets of Victorian society. She is able to portray the condemnation society heaps on Heloise for her profession and lack of morality and yet, thanks to her wealthy protectors, she is able to move among them. At the same time her past allows her to visit brothels and whorehouses with impunity and converse with the poor. Personally I did not find Heloise overly convincing as I found her far too modern for the times, both in her thinking and attitudes. And she smokes before cigarettes were commercially available.

She Be Damned is as much about Victorian morals as it is about crime. It is not a cozy novel with its frequent references to sex and abortion, the descriptions of the victims' mutilation and ripe language. I would be interested to read more about Heloise in a different setting.

This is an interesting novel with an easy, readable style about it so I have no hesitation in recommending it as a good read.