WHY: It is the Victorian era and society is both entranced by and fearful of that suspicious character known as the New Woman. She rides those new-fangled bicycles and doesn't like to be told what to do. And, in crime fiction, such female detectives as Loveday Brooke, Dorcas Dene, and Lady Molly of Scotland Yard are out there shadowing suspects, crawling through secret passages, fingerprinting corpses, and sometimes committing a lesser crime in order to solve a murder.
A reviewer I follow wrote: "Each time I finished a story I thought to myself, "Man, that was really good. I hope the next one isn't a let down." And the next one would be even better than the last."