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With its wonderful depiction of Victorian England, a grim Whitechapel murder-thriller plot, some cross-dressing eroticism, all caught up in the theatrical world of music halls and circuses, Ann Featherstone's Walking in Pimlico will almost certainly appeal to fans of Sarah Waters who miss the Victorian melodrama and eroticism of her earlier novels such as Fingersmith and Tipping The Velvet . Featherstone, previously the co-author of an academic study of the Victorian Clown, clearly knows the period she is writing about, filling the authentic characterisation with authentic and relevant background details that capture the contrast between seediness and the glamour of the period, as well as the seediness behind the glamour of another profession that isn't entirely unconnected from "the oldest profession" itself. There is however no info-dumping of academic research here - everything is in the service of the characterisation and the plot. Written from a number of first...