![]() As is Charlotte, who arranged to have herself “ruined” to escape the strictures of upper-middle-class respectable and restricted womanhood. ![]() Watson, nee Joanna Hamish Redmayne, is also a former actress and retired denizen of the demimondaine, and therefore a scarlet woman. John Watson is the widow of an Army doctor who was killed in, of course, the Afghan War. John Watson was a veteran of the Afghan war, Mrs. Watson, a well-to-do widow, comes to Charlotte’s rescue when she is at her most desperate, and finds a common cause and a new lease on life assisting in Charlotte’s investigations. There is a Watson, and her origins (yes, her) are even more fascinating than Holmes, both in the ways that they do and do not follow the original character. Her first case arises from a need to clear their names, as well as to see justice done. Not that she committed one, nor has anyone in her family, but that her disgrace gives her sister and her parents a reason to commit one, and puts them under suspicion of having done so. She reckons with all of the consequences to herself, but neglects to factor murder into her calculations. Charlotte’s solution to the problem of getting out from under her parents’ control while not putting herself under the control of a husband is ingenious. Part of the frustration in this book is that those restrictions were very, well, restrictive. She hides who she really is behind a fictional “brother”, and conducts many of her consultations via the post, the better to hide her physical self. While she does get a bit luckier than is probably likely, even her solutions fit within the time-frame. She is forced to deal with all of the prejudices and restrictions that surrounded young women of that era, and find a way around them. One of the elements that is both fascinating and frustrating about A Study in Scarlet Women is that Charlotte Holmes does not feel anachronistic to her era at all. The rendering of Sherlock Holmes, nee Charlotte Holmes, in A Study in Scarlet Women is contemporaneous with the original Sherlock Holmes canon. ![]() While there was a well-known series by Carole Nelson Douglas that features Irene Adler (“the woman” from A Scandal in Bohemia) as a Sherlock Holmes-type detective, I’ll admit that I can’t find a citation for an actual female Holmes, although I know I’ve read them.Ī Study in Scarlet Women is just that – it posits Sherlock Holmes as a woman who uses Sherlock Holmes as a nom-de-guerre to shroud her work in an air of mystery, and to keep both the police and the criminal element from dismissing her as merely a female. King’s Mary Russell series along with the fantasy version in the late Randall Garrett’s Lord Darcy series and Neil Gaiman’s award-winning A Study in Emerald. Sherlock Holmes has been adapted in so many different directions, from the very different modern TV incarnations of Sherlock and Elementary to the slightly off-tangent House to the married Holmes in Laurie R. I love Sherlock Holmes pastiches, so when I saw the eARC of A Study in Scarlet Women, I was instantly intrigued. ![]() But in the end, it will be up to Charlotte, under the assumed name Sherlock Holmes, to challenge society’s expectations and match wits against an unseen mastermind. She’ll have help from friends new and old-a kind-hearted widow, a police inspector, and a man who has long loved her. When the city is struck by a trio of unexpected deaths and suspicion falls on her sister and her father, Charlotte is desperate to find the true culprits and clear the family name. But even she never thought that she would become a social pariah, an outcast fending for herself on the mean streets of London. USA Today bestselling author Sherry Thomas turns the story of the renowned Sherlock Holmes upside down… With her inquisitive mind, Charlotte Holmes has never felt comfortable with the demureness expected of the fairer sex in upper class society. Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Published by Berkley on October 18th 2016 A Study in Scarlet Women (Lady Sherlock, #1) by Sherry Thomasįormats available: paperback, ebook, audiobook
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