MURDER BY DEGREES

Debut novelist Mukerji, who is also a practicing physician, applies her knowledge of medicine to a gripping tale set in 1875 Philadelphia.

Dr. Lydia Weston serves working-class patients at the city’s Spruce Street Clinic and teaches future female doctors at the Woman’s Medical College. Her accomplishments are often dismissed by men who believe women are prone to hysteria and not capable of being good doctors. When the body of a woman believed to be one of Lydia’s patients is discovered in the Schuylkill River, Lydia is invited into the police investigation. Anna Ward worked as a housemaid for a wealthy family whose haughty members are far from willing to cooperate with the search for her killer. Their sense of privilege opens the door for Mukerji to morph her crime novel into a social novel that deftly examines the deprivation suffered by people in service and the struggles of women like Lydia and Anna who want to choose their own paths. Mukerji, like Patricia Cornwell and Kathy Reichs, pulls the reader into fascinating and richly detailed forensic autopsies and blesses Weston with the instincts and determination to carry out a murder investigation as effectively as—or even better than—the police. This well-constructed narrative will also be appealing to literature lovers as Lydia finds solace in reading Tennyson, Browning, and Wordsworth. Mukerji writes with the assurance of a more seasoned novelist, and armchair sleuths can hope this is the beginning of a substantive new series. Like Jacqueline Winspear’s Maisie Dobbs, Lydia is a strong and indomitable woman who transcends her circumstances to become her true self and a crusader for social justice.

This atmospheric novel heralds the arrival of a talented new writer and an unforgettable heroine.