Sarah Dunant’s Transgressions (1997) explores how crimes against women are named, reported, and investigated and presents the reader with a contested feminist exploration of language and the law. The novel focuses on Elizabeth Skvorecky, a translator who agrees to work on a misogynistic Czech thriller to cope with her sudden solitude following a breakup with her lover. Elizabeth lives in a large house that appears to be subject to supernatural intrusion, and she finds, as she works, that the novel she is in the process of translating ends up having an impact on her own "real life", particularly in its recitation of violence against women. The novel thus sets a gothic romance alongside the thriller narrative, with reading, writing, and speaking about violence, all subject to a number of different interpretive frames.