A DEADLY AFFECTION, by Cuyler Overholt

We don't often get stories set in America in the early 1900s, and this deftly-drawn mystery hits all the right notes. Manhattan in 1907, a complex protagonist with a complicated past, plus a bloody double murder to provide mystery. Adding to the pleasure is a deeply-researched setting, with all the right details slipped in: society and its excesses and falsities, social injustice, immigrant communities, stupendous wealth next to appalling poverty, ignorance, arrogance, corruption.
Genevieve Summerford is a new doctor, graduating third in her class and embarked on a psychiatric career in an age deeply suspicious of mental imbalance and women outside the confines of their kitchens or nurseries. Her doting father presses her to accept a position his influence has secured at a local hospital. When a woman in Genna's church depression counseling group is discovered standing, blood-spattered, over the body of a well-known society physician, Genna leaps to her defense. The cynical detective in charge ignores conflicting evidence: he's got his perp with the victim's blood still on her hands. Case closed.
Genna reluctantly turns to Simon Shaw, once in her family's service and now an influential Tammany operative, to find a way to save the young woman she knows is innocent. Shaw, cynical and now powerful, sneers at her efforts and her upper-class naivete about her client's life. Their conflict is equally compelling as they battle to not only save the woman Genna believes innocent but sort out the strands of an old betrayal that, when uncovered, reveals many of Genna's memories and assumptions to be based on lies.
This is a series to follow! It's a five.
Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for letting me read an advance copy.

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