I finished this book this morning while waiting on an oil change for my car. It is set post-WWI, at University College London. The main character, Saffron Everleigh, has been hired as a research assistant in the Botany department. She is following in her father's footsteps in that same department, trying to find her footing as a woman in the old boys club. The professor she reports to is supportive, but the head of Biology has assaulted her and continues to make demeaning comments.
Rumours, spread by the rejected department head and other men who feel that Saffron should be sexually receptive to them, cause her concern, especially when she meets a young man in Biology who interests her a great deal. Alexander Ashton has his own set of problems, namely shell shock/PTSD from the war, which makes him a bit unpredictable.
Saffron meets Alexander at a school dinner party, where everyone is shocked when a professor's wife collapses, apparently poisoned. Saffron has overheard the poisoned woman discussing the state of her marriage and quickly realizes that there are both personal and political currents swirling around the event. She soon also comes to the conclusion that she, as a botanist, knows more about poisons than the police do and she is determined to protect her employer.
Predictably, Saffron feels the need to conduct her own investigation into the matter and Alexander gets dragged along with her out of both worry and attraction. Also predictable is a bit of B&E using hair pins and some slinking around in greenhouses and gardens. If you have read any of the Victorian murder mysteries featuring female investigators, you will recognize the formula. The author doesn't make effective use of the 1923 time period, beyond Saffron not needing a chaperone while spending time with a male colleague. Alexander is damaged and attractive, but I didn't get a real feeling of who he truly is. He is apparently going on a university research trip to South America, so he must be a competent academic, but those three things plus his mutual attraction to Saffron are all I really learned about him.
What the author does represent well is the struggle that women experienced while trying to establish themselves in these patriarchal bastions, being sexually harassed, talked down to, and dismissed as lightweight (and sometimes still do).
I read this book for the Arsenic and Old Lace square of my Bingo card. That category has already been called, so I get to claim my first square!
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