Book 5: Murder on Cold Street
I found The Lady Sherlock Book series a couple of years ago and was immediately entranced. The series, written by Sherry Thomas, takes Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s characters and turns them on their sides, inside out and upside down. The result is a collection of stories that are part masterful mystery, part exercise in exquisite language, and part deft storytelling. All written with the same attention to language and detail that Doyle gave us in his stories.
Where Doyle creates main characters with backgrounds that are revealed in an extremely limited manner, Thomas provides us with a coterie of people who are complicated, layered, interesting, and occasionally exasperating. Not to mention often funny*.
If you’ve read here for very long, you know I’ve been on a Holmes / Doyle kick for quite a while. In fact, I strongly recommend Stephen Fry’s audio collection of the entire Doyle canon.
If you enjoy a good mystery and want a story that is very much not a + b = c bland, I suggest you start with Sherry Thomas’ “A Study in Scarlet Women” being sure to buckle up for an adventure (or two) that you won’t soon forget. Be prepared; you will eagerly reach for the next volume in the series and continue through until you’ve inhaled the entire series so far.
Yes, you will want to read this series in order. While each book stands alone, there are a few story arcs that continue not only between books, but across the series.
*Charlotte’s sense of fashion is, um, colorful.
“Murder on Cold Street” takes us into one of the most complicated and convoluted of Holmes’ cases. This time the client is Inspector Treadles’ wife, who is desperately searching for help to exonerate her husband who has been found locked in a room with two dead men. The Inspector isn’t talking about what actually happened and the information Holmes (and the reader) is initially given isn’t quite what it seems.
Narrated by Kate Reading, this book is a wonderful excursion into an adventure that is part mystery, part romance, part history, and lots of fun.
I’d love to hear what you think of the books. Please add a comment below.
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