Baker Street Inquiries

Sherlock's landlady and Dr. Watson's wife help a blackmailed woman only to find themselves in a murder case in this mystery series debut. The women in Sherlock Holmes's life have grown tired of toiling in his shadow. Matters come to a head when the Great Man declines to help a desperate young bride, prompting Mrs. Hudson (Holmes's housekeeper) and Mary Watson (wife to the good Doctor) to set up a sleuthing shop of their own, operating out of the kitchen at 221B Baker Street. Every clue they untangle leads to, yes, the grim slums of Whitechapel, where Jack the Ripper appears still to be busy with his carving knives. With so many women in terrible danger, it seems only appropriate that it's women who will set things right.

A murder at the hospital draws Sherlock Holmes's bedridden landlady and Dr. Watson's wife into another puzzling mystery. Patients are dying in the hospital ward. Surely this isn't news. But to Mrs. Hudson, ill and dizzy from medication, the deaths-one patient, then another, and all of them women!-seem sinisterly connected. Even if she's the only person who sees the connection. Mary Watson knows just how she feels, though her focus is less on sick women than on missing boys-the skinny, grubby, poor ones that nobody wanted in the first place. Sherlock Holmes isn't interested in either issue; he and Dr. Watson have more important puzzles to solve. So once again, it is left to Mary and Mrs. Hudson to help the truly vulnerable, to draw lines between the dying women and the disappearing boys, and to follow those lines to their grim conclusion. "Riveting. . . . A thrilling historical mystery novel about a woman's work to uncover the twisted nature of humanity's worst beings." -Foreword Reviews "{A} solid sequel." -Publishers Weekly