A sort of detective story that takes place in 19th Century San Francisco. Annie is a young widow who is trying to survive in this woman-unfriendly era after the suicide of her husband. While running a boarding house with several tenants, she is also providing "personal and professional advice" in the guise of a medium named Sybil. She has received a letter from a creditor asking her to pay her husband's debt or give up the house she has in lieu of the debt.

When one of her regular clients dies by suicide she finds that he has left her some stocks but these have disappeared. Suspicious of this, she poses as a maid and starts working in the deceased man's household. While trying to keep anyone from discovering her real identity, she is also dragged into a series of mysterious events which ends in murder. She is now convinced that her client did not commit suicide and was actually murdered. As she gets closer to the truth she is putting herself more and more in danger.

Louisa Locke is a professor of history and has started writing these Victorian San Francisco books based on her studies that go especially into the area of women's lives and rights in the 19th century. One feels that the details are quite instructive but the book's crime elements are not novel or exciting. One learns a lot about that era and the difficulty of women's life, the story is not very satisfactory. From my perspective I would always prefer a good Agatha Christie novel.