Ultimately, A Dangerous Business is a novel about the dangers that women face to perform jobs that enable them to survive in a difficult world. The novel follows two women who, after their husbands' deaths, are left without a means to support themselves. Thus, they turn to sex work. Because of their work, they can earn a living, but they are also looked down upon and frequently put into danger because of their profession and their gender. Women, the novel argues, are at a higher risk to die because of their profession. And it shouldn't be like that. The novel, which is a work of feminism, argues that women should be treated equally to men and should be safe in their work—no matter how socially unacceptable that work is.
A Dangerous Business is not only an entertaining whodunnit, but it is also a thematically complex and important novel. It explores themes of murder and its consequences, independence, the importance of friendship, the desire for people to gain power and wealth, and how successful people can be when they are working as a team. It also explores themes of having fun in hard times and pulling yourself up by your bootstraps after going through something difficult.
The year is 1851, and Monterey, California was a rough town at the center of the American Wild West and Gold Rush. Although Monterey and the West more generally was dangerous place, it was a place in which people could become fabulously wealthy if they got the right opportunity. For most, that opportunity never came. Work opportunities, let alone success, were hard to come by for everyone, but especially for women.
A Dangerous Business follows a young woman named Eliza Ripple, who is still reeling from the death of her husband after a brutal bar fight in which he was involved. After her husband's death, Eliza is forced to work in a brothel so that she can financially stay afloat. Even though her new profession was looked down upon and frequently dangerous for women, Eliza was happy to have some financial stability. Eliza was equally happy to find that her new madam (pimp) whose name was Mrs. Parks was a decent woman and that the men to who she provided services to were well-mannered and unexpectedly kind.
Just as quickly as Eliza and her friend Jean fall into their new profession, a malevolent presence makes themselves known to the town. Bodies of women, some of whom work in the brothel with Eliza and Jean, begin to show up on the outskirts of town in a particularly macabre display. The two don't like seeing such an awful thing happening to their town and the people who live in it, so they set out to catch the killer using their intelligence and wits. The two work together to figure out what happened to the women and work together to determine who did it.
Eliza and Jean team up to solve the mystery. The two women, however, quickly realize that the killer might be closer to them than they thought. They start to wonder if they work with or have serviced the killer in the brothel, which causes the brothel's clients to be more and more suspicious and violent, which also causes the workers to be extra vigilant. Still, the women are determined to bring the killer to justice, even as the country grows tenser and the possibility of war grows greater.
Mrs. Parks had previously given all of the women who worked under her a critical warning: “This is a dangerous business, but between you and me, being a woman is a dangerous business, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise." Even though they faced great danger, the duo were able to determine who the killer was and bring them to justice, showing their value as compared to men.
