Review: BLACK SILK AND BURIED SECRETS

BLACK SILK AND BURIED SECRETS by Deborah Challinor (HarperCollins, 2025)

Reviewed by Karen Chisholm

Sydney, 1871. Twenty-five-year-old widow Tatty Crowe is the owner of busy undertaking firm Crowe Funerals. Life and business are good until Tatty notices how many women are dying after illicit abortions and after a terrible tragedy close to home, she vows to expose the culprit.

And then there are the dead babies abandoned around the city. Once again Tatty sets out to investigate the crisis and finds herself immersed in the dark and heartless world of baby farming. Along the way she encounters an old foe, and clashes with a new adversary who, it transpires, is far more dangerous.

From the grim slums of Chippendale and Newtown to the grand houses of Woolloomooloo to Sydney's rowdy Criminal Court, comes the next chapter in the story of compassionate and clever - but headstrong - Tatty Crowe..

The author of this series of now two novels, is a bestselling historical fiction writer, and you can tell just how impeccable her research is, even without reading the author's notes at the end of both novels, expanding on the thinking, and investigations that went into the construction of these stories.

Featuring the now twenty-five-year old, and widowed, Tatty (Tatiana) Crowe, the first female undertaker in Sydney, her life now, post the death of her awful husband, is going well. The business, originally her husband's family's, is doing well under her guidance, they are providing a sensitive service to paying customers, and plenty of free services where required. The household is functioning smoothly and there is much that you'd think Tatty would be well within her rights to rest on the laurels of. But there's something happening to women and babies in Sydney, with an increasing number of dead babies being found, and an increasing number of women dying from botched abortions. 

In the process of identifying the worst of the backyard butcher abortionists, Tatty does her absolute best to refute the shame that women and their families feel (with some well adjudged asides at the men involved - most of whom seem to be happy to ignore their marriages, families, responsibilities, and just walk away), although when the consequences get very close to home, she struggles with grief as well as deep anger.

The thing I really like about the character of Tatty Crowe is her determination, and her anger. In a time when it's easy to think that women just put up with, made the best, and carried on in quiet suffering, she's one of those women that fights back. Albeit quietly, often underhandedly, but she's not afraid to right some wrongs and kick some heads along the way. New readers to this series would be well served to start out with the first book Black Silk and Sympathy for a very big indication of just how far she's prepared to go, although there are plenty of references to that in this book as well.

Supported by a great cast of female and male characters, this is historical crime fiction which takes on societal attitudes and expectations from a female perspective, without getting strident. Instead there's that quiet, steely determination, something I was reminded needs to nurtured in the armoury for now and the future.

Karen Chisholm is one of Australia's leading crime reviewers. She created Aust Crime Fiction in 2006, a terrific resource - please check it out. Karen also reviews for Newtown Review of Books, and has been a regular judge of the Ned Kelly Awards and Ngaio Marsh Awards. This review was first published on Karen's website; she kindly shares some of her reviews of crime and thriller novels written by New Zealanders adn Australians on Crime Watch as well as on Aust Crime Fiction.