Ghastly Business
“Ghastly Business” by Louise Levene, published by Bloomsbury Publishing on July 4, 2011, is a work of fiction that immerses readers in the darkly intriguing world of 1929 London. The narrative follows Dora Strang, a doctor’s daughter with a keen interest in anatomy, as she navigates a city rife with crime and sensational headlines. Denied a medical career, Dora takes a position as a filing clerk for the renowned pathologist Alfred Kemble, where she becomes engrossed in the macabre details of post-mortems and high-profile court cases.
As the story unfolds, readers will encounter a blend of humor and horror, highlighted by Dora’s interactions with her eccentric landlady and the enigmatic Dr. Kemble, whose charm complicates her professional life. The book explores themes of ambition and vulnerability against the backdrop of a society still reeling from the effects of the Great War. With 288 pages, this edition captures the essence of interwar London, where the realities of crime and the female experience intertwine in unexpected ways.
Official synopsis Publisher
1929. A girl is strangled ina London alley, the mangled corpse of a peeping Tom is found in a railwaytunnel and the juicy details of the latest trunk murder are updated hourly infresh editions of the evening papers.
Into this insalubrious world steps Dora Strang, a doctor’s daughter with anunmaidenly passion for anatomy. Denied her own medical career, she moves intolodgings with a hilarious, insecticidal landlady and begins life as filingclerk to the country’s pre-eminent pathologist, Alfred Kemble.
Dora is thrilled by the grisly post-mortems and the headline-grabbing courtcases and more fascinated still by the pathologist himself: an enigmatic warhero with bottle-green eyes and an air of sardonic glamour – the embodiment ofall her girlish fantasies. But Dora’s job holds more than a few surprises, notleast of which is finding herself frequently under the watchful gaze – andoccasionally wandering hands – of the distinguished Dr Kemble. As things take adistinctly ghastly turn, both in one of the department’s major cases and inDora’s own life, the newspaper reporters sharpen their pencils in morbidanticipation … But can the impressionable Miss Strang emerge unscathed?
Ghastly Business conjures the world ofinterwar London with gleeful vigour: a time when a woman’s body was onlymentioned if someone had dismembered it; when the scars of the Great War werestill fresh and when a pretty young bluestocking needed to tread very carefullyin order to avoid becoming yet another of its casualties.
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