A dead man in a locked room reads as suicide to the untrained eye, but not to unladylike aristocrat Lizzie Newton. And she refuses to keep quiet about it, drawing the attention of the inspector who takes on the case. Can she prove her theory as well as change his opinion of a woman's value to science and truth-seeking?
The case here is not as interesting as the characters looking into it, but unfortunately the majority of the page-time is devoted to excessively re-iterating the facts of the murder and its revelations. I'd much rather find out more about Lizzie's past and the circumstances of her steward / fiancé. The former's not afraid to stick her finger in the bullet-hole of a corpse's head to test a hypothesis and the latter's clearly got reasons for leaving the law, his former field, for what amounts to a servant's position. I like the inspector, too, as long as he doesn't just exist to give Lizzie someone to explain her theories to as a stand-in for the reader. The mystery aspect is fine as long as it's kept in check, but it gets a little out of hand this volume. We'll see if the next one gives us a little more character insight / development and a little less repetitive sleuthing.
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