Miss Moriarty, I Presume? by Sherry Thomas

The mystery itself is conducted long distance and through a trick necessitated by the gender-flipping while competently handled, its intricacy is less gripping than the gradual reveal of a new Holmes-ian world and its inhabitants. There is also a tantalizing, slow-burn love story between Holmes and a longtime friend befitting Thomas' skills as a romance novelist.

Holmes herself is cast in the mold of the recent television incarnations of Conan Doyle’s savant as well as Deanna Raybourn’s detectives, Lady Julia Grey and Veronica Speedwell-with an added devotion to food that lends her an unexpected charm. The novel is peopled with characters who warm the reader with a glow of recognition-Watson, Lestrade, Mycroft, and Moriarty all appear in some form-but Thomas also imbues them with personalized histories and characteristics. Weaving them together is amateur sleuth Charlotte Holmes, who is also an inadvertent participant in them due to a social catastrophe she precipitated for personal reasons. The novel begins in 1886 England with the foreshadowing of a suspicious death, but the incident is only one of many seemingly unrelated events that form a pattern over the succeeding chapters. Gender bending is just the first sign that unusual happenings are afoot in this origin story for a revamped Sherlock Holmes series by bestselling author Thomas ( The Perilous Sea, 2015, etc.). And Charlotte's longtime friend and ally Lord Ingram at last turns his seductive prowess on Charlotte-or is it the other way around?īut the more secrets Charlotte unravels about Miss Moriarty's disappearance, the more she wonders why Moriarty has entrusted this delicate matter to her of all people.What if the word’s most famous (and eccentric) Victorian detective were a young gentlewoman in the midst of a scandal? Meanwhile, Charlotte's sister Livia tries to make sense of a mysterious message from her beau Mr.

Watson travel to a remote community of occult practitioners where Moriarty's daughter was last seen, a place full of lies and liars.

Moriarty fears that tragedy has befallen his daughter and wants Charlotte to find out the truth.Ĭharlotte and Mrs. Charlotte Holmes comes face to face with her enemy when Moriarty turns to her in his hour of need, in the USA Today bestselling series set in Victorian England.Ī most unexpected client shows up at Charlotte Holmes's doorstep: Moriarty himself.

Miss Moriarty, I Presume? by Sherry Thomas