The Bells of Old Bailey

From the blog Clothes in Books: "Long Greeting and its surrounding villages are being riven by poison pen letters, deaths, and blackmail, and the book centres on a splendid establishment which combines café, beauty parlour and hat shop: Minerva...The book contains poison pen letters, blackmail, abortion and adultery all done in rather a grim way."

"It is a very interesting book, with a lot to it: far from cozy, and with a splendid array of female characters of all different kinds." In other words, it may have been written in 1947 but don't think you're going to get a jolly village mystery to curl up with.