Review: The Hourglass Factory

The Hourglass Factory by Lucy Ribchester
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

1912 and London is in turmoil...

The suffragette movement is reaching fever pitch but for broke Fleet Street tomboy Frankie George, just getting by in the cut-throat world of newspapers is hard enough. Sent to interview trapeze artist Ebony Diamond, Frankie finds herself fascinated by the tightly laced acrobat and follows her across London to a Mayfair corset shop that hides more than one dark secret.

Then Ebony Diamond mysteriously disappears in the middle of a performance, and Frankie is drawn into a world of tricks, society columnists, corset fetishists, suffragettes and circus freaks. How did Ebony vanish, who was she afraid of, and what goes on behind the doors of the mysterious Hourglass Factory?

From the newsrooms of Fleet Street to the drawing rooms of high society, the missing Ebony Diamond leads Frankie to the trail of a murderous villain with a plot more deadly than anyone could have imagined...

I found this a challenge to start with but I was gradually drawn in and I found myself enjoying it. It was interesting to read about London in the early 20th century, especially as I recognised so many of the areas in the book. I also learned more about the Sufragette movement at the time.

I wasn't so convinced about the police involvement in the book and, as other reviewers have commented, some characters were more developed than others. Overall though I thought it was a very good debut.

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