Lizzie Martin has become the latest heroine of Bicester crime novelist Ann Granger. A paid companion to a wealthy woman in Victorian London, Lizzie is quite different from the tweedy Meredith Mitchell of the Mitchell and Markby series and Fran Varady, who clings to an unsteady life in the London of today.

Yet all three of Ann Granger's women are resourceful people, who quickly sum up a situation and can usually get themselves out of scrapes.

No sooner has Lizzie arrived in London from Derbyshire than a dead body crosses her path. It soon transpires the body was her predecessor as companion to her aunt living in Dorset Square, close to where Marylebone railway station will be built.

In fact railway stations play an important part in the plot as the body was found among houses being demolished in what was called Agar Town to make way for St Pancras station.Lizzie soon learns that middle-class Victorian life is not all it seems, particularly when she learns a so-called respectable doctor is leading a double-life.

She also and finds an echo in her childhood whent it transpires the police inspector on the case, Ben Ross, was "rescued" by the philanthrophy of her father when he paid for the education of several poor mining children. Ross went to London to seek his fortune and enlisted in the police.

Together and separately Lizzie and Ben work to solve the murder there are a few suspects lined up. It all makes for an intriguing tale, with period detail interwoven in a satisfying way Ann Granger wears her historical research lightly.

*A Rare Interest in Corpses by Ann Granger is published by Headline at £19.99.