Elizabeth Miles is a scrappy independent minded young woman from New York City around the time of the First World War. She makes her way as a grifter, creating false identities at the drop of a hat and playing fast and loose with the truth and the strictures of polite  society. In this first novel in the Counterfeit Lady series she gets involved with a group of war profiteers, a band of energetic suffragists, and an Old New York Family that is brimming over with secrets. 

This book is clearly laying the groundwork for an ongoing series and author Thompson brings her vast research into New York society, much she shows of brilliantly in her Gaslight Mysteries series, energetically to the fore. This story cycle appears to be more in the suspense and thriller veins and I’m curious to read future titles. Sarah Brandt Malloy from the Gaslight Mysteries is one of the most deftly drawn characters to come along since Kinsey Millhone and V. I. Warshawsky. Elizabeth Miles may join them, but at this juncture I feel that this new series marks Thompson’s trial run at stepping away from a genre she knows how to manipulate with ease. We shall see how well her mastery of a new genre will develop.