Published in late 2022, author Jane Smiley's A Dangerous Business is set in the 1850s during the Gold Rush in California. Smiley's novel follows two prostitutes named Eliza and Jean who try to find their way in a state and country which is on the precipice of a civil war. The town they are living in, which we now know as Monterey, is lawless and few people (including the women) have financial security. They live their lives from paycheck to paycheck; their life grows more difficult after the dead bodies of several women are found on the outskirts of town. Together, the two work together to investigate the deaths of the women and find and bring to justice the person who killed them.
A Dangerous Business received mixed reviews when it was published—more so than Smiley's previous novels. On one hand, Kirkus Reviews called A Dangerous Business "An oddly pleasant little trot through Gold Rush–era California." The Washington Post called the novel an “amazing mash-up of a Western, a serial-killer mystery and a feminist-inflected tale of life in a bordello." However, The Guardian was much less charitable in its review of the novel. They wrote that "Anything can be made believable in fiction, of course; but Smiley can’t be bothered to really look at what’s going on before her very eyes. Worst of all, at the end of the [bland] novel Eliza is the same frank innocent she was at the start; she hasn’t learned anything and–more’s the pity–neither have we."
