Robin Stevens is the author of the Murder Most Unladylike series. One of her top ten crime capers, as shared at the Guardian:The Ruby in the Smoke by Philip PullmanRead about another entry on the list.
Philip Pullman is most famous for the His Dark Materials trilogy, but his Sally Lockhart quartet, about a beautiful blonde girl who has “a thorough grounding in military tactics, can run a business, ride like a Cossack and shoot straight with a pistol”, is a fantastic mystery series. This first book, about a missing ruby in foggy, dangerous late-Victorian London, is a heart-pounding mystery that shares a lot of DNA with Wilkie Collins’s The Moonstone and Conan Doyle’s The Sign of Four (both excellent criminal capers in their own right). Sally is a heroine to die for, and these books are marvels.
The Ruby in the Smoke is one of Joanne Harris's top ten kids' books with kickass heroines.
--Marshal Zeringue
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