Originally posted April 24, 2024. Historical fiction isn’t my typical genre wheelhouse, but my brother-in-law got me a Victorian mystery with a female lead last Christmas, and I was excited to try something new from a debut author. Bridget Walsh’s The Tumbling Girl is a gaslamp mystery set against the backdrop of a Ripper-alike dubbed the Hairpin Killer. Plots that revolve around the gruesome dismemberment of young women risk falling into voyeuristic misogyny themselves. The Tumbling Girl is fully aware of this, and Walsh incorporates the treatment of women and sex workers in Victorian England as a major theme of the plot. Successfully? Somewhat! Minnie Ward is the writer and functional stage manager at a music hall called the Variety Palace (I’m not sure if this is intended to be the real-life Palace Theatre ). Her best friend Rose Watkins is an acrobat who performs at the venue, and when she fails to show up to work, Minnie soon discovers that Rose has died in a h...