Petty Treason — Madeleine E. Robins

Miss Sarah Tolerance, Agent of Inquiry, refuses to follow the path of the Fallen Women who have gone before her. She's a straight shooter, with her pistol as well as her wit, and her mind is as sharp as the blade of her sword. She has remade herself into a private investigator of sorts -- the sole one of her kind in 1810 in a London not quite like ours.

Her newest case is that of the Chevalier d'Aubigny, a French émigré beaten to death in his own bed, all the doors and windows of the house sealed tight. The murder is a classic locked-room mystery; Miss Tolerance, hired by the Chevalier's wife, knows she can find the key.

But the Chevalier had more enemies than he had friends, and it seems there is no one who didn't wish him dead. The search for his killer takes Miss Tolerance from the lowest brothels of the seedy London underworld, where men go to indulge their more aggressive desires, to the Royal Family and a Duke who must hide his perversions or risk the Throne.