★★★½
This is Maria McCann’s third novel and it has large shoes to fill: her debut, As Meat Loves Salt, set during the English Civil War, is one of the most compelling pieces of historical fiction I’ve read (with one of the most conflicted, unsettling antiheroes). Her second book, The Wilding, was set at a similar period and, for me, wasn’t nearly as powerful; but Ace, King, Knave is a return to form. Moving away from the male narrators and the 17th-century setting of the first two novels, McCann draws us into the roistering world of 18th-century London, and the experiences of two very different women.
The Idle Woman 