In the summer of 1890 in New York City, suffragette Florence Tod sets out to solve the mystery of the death by poisoning of a librarian. Following the instructions on a mysterious gold tablet, the librarian ingests poison and when Florence and her cousin discover the body and remove the gold tablet, they set off a chain of events that involve them in a dangerous conspiracy. A cross between a novel and a murder mystery, Deadly Illumination is a lively, tricky story into which the author has woven solid period research.