📖 Book Review ~ The Women in the Shadows by Harriet Fox

HQ
9 October 2025
Thanks to the publishers for my copy of this book

London, 1888. A monster prowls the gaslit streets, and the police are looking in all the wrong places, at all the wrong suspects. But three women refuse to stay silent.

Emma, the chief detective’s sharp-witted wife, sees the investigation failing. Maggie, a private investigator, exposes men’s darkest secrets. Bet, a police station cleaner, overhears what others ignore.

Together, they form an alliance to hunt down the killer dubbed Jack the Ripper. But as the women weave through the slums, brothels, and smoke-filled parlours of London’s underworld, they uncover corruption more sinister than they ever imagined.

The city belonged to men – until now.’

📖 My Review..

There are endless conspiracy theories around Jack the Ripper and many books, both fictional and non-fictional, have been written about him. Women in the Shadows takes what is already known about the murders and weaves them into a very readable fictional story about three women, from different backgrounds, who come together to try and solve the murders. Emma is the wife of Inspector Abberline who is in charge of the Ripper investigation, Maggie is a clever female private detective, and Bet is a feisty young woman for whom the streets of Whitechapel are achingly familiar.These intrepid women are a great bunch of characters, brought to life so clearly that you walk the streets alongside them as they do what they can in order to bring a killer to justice. However, I did suspend belief a little at some of the outcomes of their investigations but that added to the overall dynamic of the story.

The Women in the Shadows is a fascinating story which keeps true to the murder victims without sharing any of the more gruesome details and yet gives a plausible explanation for could have happened during the Ripper’s killing spree in the latter part of 1888. Well written, and with a realistic sense of time and place, the dark, and shadowy streets, around Whitechapel come alive, highlighting the poverty of its inhabitants, the desperate nature of those who seek comfort in a gin bottle and of the true vulnerability of those women who walked the streets at nights in fear of their lives.

About the Author

Harriet Fox is a writer and journalist who writes dark and twisty crime novels about women’s stories out if the shadows of history. Harriet is obsessed with crime fiction, horror films and ghost stories as well as history podcasts and cryptic crosswords.She also writes historical fiction as Kerry Barrett.

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