“Recipes for medicines and cosmetics at the time of this novel were full of deadly substances…opium, arsenic, mercury,” says In A Gilded Cage author Rhys Bowen. “I saw how easy it would be to kill rather than cure.”

     The story of In a Gilded Cage has Irish-born New York detective Molly Murphy joining the march for women’s rights in 1903 with Vassar college women who want the vote. She makes friends with former Vassar girl Emily Boswell who works at a pharmacy. Emily asks Molly to help find out more about her parents who died after she was born. As Molly searches Emily’s past, Vassar girls start dying. Why are they dying? What really happened to Emily’s parents?

     “There were two starting points, the theme of the role of women in 1903 and pharmacy at that time,” says Bowen. “I wanted to show how Vassar graduates came out of college with lively, open minds and great dreams and then were shrunk to what society expected of wives. I wanted to touch on the suffragist movement and society’s restrictions on women. I always do loads of research…into medicines, into the Boxer rebellion and massacre of missionaries in China, New York cemeteries…you name it.”

     “I've just learned that this book is going to be used as bibliotherapy by a psychotherapist,” says Bowen. Bibliotherapy is the use of selected reading materials in psychiatry as guidance to the solution of personal problems through directed reading.

     “It's been a long, positive relationship with St. Martins,” says Bowen. “We’ve been a partnership for about ten books at least now.” Kelley Ragland at St Martin's/Minotaur is Rhys Bowen’s editor. “It's always been a joy to work with Kelley.”

     In a Gilded Cage is the eighth book in the series. The development of the characters and storyline is fascinating, with the details that Bowen uses from her research of women fighting for the right to vote and life in New York in the early 1900s. Molly is conflicted about marriage and the freedoms she’ll give up as a married woman.

     Rhys Bowen lives in Marin County, California, and was born in Bath, England. Bowen has published ten Constable Evans novels, eight Molly Murphy novels and two novels in the Royal Spyness series.

In a Gilded Cage by Rhys Bowen. Hardcover, 288 pages, Publisher: Minotaur Books, 1 edition (March 17, 2009). Language: English ISBN 9780312385347