‘Viper in the Nest’ by Georgina Clarke

Published by Verve Verve Books,
24 April 2025.
ISBN: 978-0-85730-895-5 (PBO)

Just when you think the list of unlikely amateur sleuths can’t get any longer, along comes the most unlikely one of all. Lizzie Hardwicke is a tart. A high-class prostitute to be exact, working out of an upmarket brothel in mid-18^th century London: a time when the more benign term sex worker was still in the distant future.

Lizzie is a cut above the average member of her profession in more ways than one. She’s very good at her job, and her clients are exclusively from the moneyed classes. She herself was gently born and properly educated, but thrown out by her clergyman father who couldn’t handle finding her in bed with the son of the lord of the manor. She’s bright and observant and consequently has come to the notice of the magistrate, who is happy to make use of her skills and contacts. She works for him as an undercover informant and has already helped to identify a murderer or two.

The first question to exercise her mind in her latest escapade is why did Richard Merrick, a nondescript civil servant, shoot himself? The only other person who seems to care is his mistress Lucy, so Lizzie is thrown on her own resources to solve the mystery.

Her quest takes her into fashionable gambling houses, questionable taverns, secret passages, violent streets, and back to the brothel which she has made her home – and even there, danger lurks. There are riots, gangs who attack people because of their race, and eventually the murder of a man everyone seemed to like, followed by another suspicious death which puts Lizzie in fear for her life.

Georgina Clarke is a historian, and it shows. She weaves a detailed background, the kind you can almost touch and taste, into which Lizzie and her friends and enemies fit seamlessly. If the various characters, good and evil, high- and low-born, didn’t actually exist, they certainly could have; she creates a rich and complex tapestry of politicians and tarts, villains and heroes, extravagant wealth and grinding poverty, and succeeds in telling a rollicking tale as well.  Lizzie Hardwicke is one of the shrewdest and most colourful heroines I’ve encountered in a long time. She frequents a side of London which fizzes with energy and danger, and its denizens are brought to life with equal vigour.

Long may Lizzie continue with her undercover career as a sleuth. I’ll be following it with interest.
------
Reviewer: Lynne Patrick

Georgina Clarke was born in Wolverhampton, has degrees from Oxford, Cambridge and London. She has always been passionate about stories and history. The Lizzie Hardwicke novels give her the opportunity to bring to life her love of the eighteenth century and her determination that a strong, intelligent and unconventional woman should get to solve the crimes - rather than be cast in the role of the sidekick. Georgina now lives in Worcester with her husband.  

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives in Oxfordshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.