Slash of Emerald, A - Patrice McDonough

A trailblazing female medical examiner in 1867 London and a skeptical Scotland Yard detective investigate a string of art world murders in this dark, atmospheric, historically rich mystery for readers of Andrea Penrose and Deanna Raynourn. London, 1867: Among the genteel young ladies of London society, painting is a perfectly acceptable pastimebut a woman who dares to pursue art as a profession is another prospect, indeed. Dr. Julia Lewis, familiar with the disrespect afforded women in untraditional careers, is hardly surprised when Scotland Yard shows little interest in complaints made by her friend, Mary Allingham, about a break-in at her art studio. Mary is just one of many "lady painters" being targeted by vandals.
Painters' sitters are vanishing, toowomen viewed by some as dispensable outcasts. Inspector Richard Tennant, however, takes the attacks seriously, suspecting they're linked to the poison-pen letters received by additional members of the Allingham family. For Julia, the issue is complicated by Tennant's previous relationship with Mary's sister-in-law, Louisa, and by her own surprising reaction to that entanglement.
But when someone close to them commits suicide and a young woman turns up dead, the case can no longer be so easily ignored by 'respectable' society. Layer after layer, Julia and Tennant scrape away the facts of the case like paint from a canvas. What emerges is a somber picture of vice, depravity, and deception stretching from London's East End to the Far Eastwith a killer at its center, determined to get away with one last, grisly murder . . .