Queen of Thieves was the enjoyable and well paced historical fiction that I needed. I was a bit reluctant to pick this up because I'm burned out on WWII genre fiction, but the post war setting enticed me to give it a chance. And I'm glad I did. 

Told in two perspectives, our main characters are Nell and Alice. Nell is a young woman struggling to find her way, living at home while working in a miserable factory job and knocked up by her first flame. Alice is the leader of a ring of female thieves, aka hoisters. When Nell has a random run in with Alice, she has an opportunity to join the gang. Little does Nell know how quickly her life will be much, much more complicated than it already is. 

This book gives big BBC period drama and Peaky Blinders vibes. If you love stories about old London and crime rings, this one is for you. There are lots of content warnings to mention so please check those before reading if you need to, but I won't list them here because it definitely goes into spoiler territory. 

This was a fun, quick read for me. My quibbles are that one of the character development devices was exceptionally cheesy and that while there was some depth to Nell and Alice, I found them tending towards the static and predictable side. I greatly enjoyed the strong pace and the way the author wove together the transitions from one point of view to the next. I will read from Beezy Marsh again.