Set in 1912, The Hourglass Factory follows Frankie – a young, low-ranking, androgynous female reporter – as she attempts to track down suffragette and trapeze artist Ebony Diamond, whom she has been commissioned to profile. Soon Frankie becomes embroiled in a complex conspiracy plot that she – with the aid of a showgirl, a rent boy and an aged-socialite – takes it on herself to solve and foil. The characters are larger-than-life and, at times, histrionic, and there is an oversaturation of themes – from politics, police work and journalism to circus life, snake charming and fetishism – in what is, at its core, a detective novel. Ribchester provides the dual structure, mounting suspense and roster of suspicious characters typical of a traditional whodunnit. Yet this is also, in part, a historical novel, with landmark events (often forgotten to be contemporaneous to one another), including suffragette marches, the sinking of the Titanic and (more tenuously) the Jack the Ripper murders, all breathing life into Ribchester’s London.
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