Soho
Published June 2, 2026
Reviewed by Barbara Fister
It’s 1879 and Londoner Kit Jimeson is one of the most skillful “dodgers” in an all-woman ring of thieves. Based south of the river near the Elephant and Castle, the women go to shops and public events in pairs to distract their marks from their nimble extraction of watches, jewelry, and shop goods. They have to be cautious: getting caught can mean a prison sentence, transportation to an Australian penal colony, or death. Kit’s younger sister urges her to find another way to make a living, and she’s considering her options when the leadership of the group abruptly changes. Maggie O’Connell, whose mother started the ring, was a talented and beautiful thief before she was betrayed and sent to Australia. Now she’s back to take over the ring and seek her revenge. The heist she plans requires Kit to undertake a role so risky she will likely be caught – unless she can find a way out.
When her sister is kidnapped, Maggie has a firm hold over Kit’s participation in the venture, which will almost certainly lead to disaster. But Kit is enterprising and works with friends to devise a different way to steal the jewels that will accomplish Maggie’s revenge and free Kit’s sister without violence and the threat of prison, so long as she can pull it off in time.
Odden has done a brilliant job of evoking Victorian Britain without making the past seem distant. The large cast of characters is easily managed thanks to her ability to distinguish them all, and the setting is vividly portrayed, from the wealthy precincts of the West End to the Elephant and Castle inn that is home to a criminal gang, to the Fleet river flowing underground with its hidden entrances used by smugglers. It’s clear the author knows her history (in fact, the story was inspired by an all-woman ring of thieves, the Forty Elephants) but her knowledge is never intrusive.
Though the heist is at the center of the story, this is more than a caper. Kit’s world is grounded in relationships and a strong sense of time and place. Readers will enjoy spending time with this light-fingered and yet principled heroine as she plies her trade and plans an escape from her dangerous life.