Review: A Study in Scarlet Women

So today I'm grumpy because while I try to be objective, there's just no way I can when it comes to the most recent book I finished.  I have no idea if it's good or bad (I mean, it's not terrible, not at all) because I just enjoyed it so much.  And I have books like that sometimes - books that very much hit things that I personally love where I want to recommend them, but I'm not sure how blinded I am by getting so many of my tastes all at once.  And that was definitely the case for this book, which I believe is either the third or fourth book I finished this year.

A Study in Scarlet Women | Sherry Thomas

Berkely

2016

336 Pages

Rating: 5 Stars

Book 4/50 of 2019

Synopsis:

With her inquisitive mind, Charlotte Holmes has never felt comfortable with the demureness expected of the fairer sex in upper class society. But even she never thought that she would become a social pariah, an outcast fending for herself on the mean streets of London. 
 
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. She’ll have help from friends new and old—a kind-hearted widow, a police inspector, and a man who has long loved her.

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.

So the first thing you have to understand is that I love Sherlock Holmes.  A lot.  I've had a post of Holmesian adaptions on the backburner for awhile, and I'm so excited I have this to include there.  I love mysteries (I, um... don't know if that was clear to any readers of this blog), and detective stories are my bread and butter.  I love them.  Someone gifted me a book of Miss Marple short stories when I was about nine, and I have been obsessed ever since.  I love puzzles in general, honestly, and solving things, so detective stories make sense.  Naturally, I would gravitate to Sherlock Holmes.  When I was young - maybe at nine when I got the Miss Marple book, maybe before - someone had gotten me a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories, though I'm fairly sure they were abridged.  I got The Hound of the Baskervilles soon after (I saw that one on the tv show Wishbone) and I was completely enamored.  I was in deep.

One reason - albeit a small reason - I love cozy mysteries is because typically they're written by women, for women.  They feature female sleuths.  A lot of time they're in female-dominated professions, or in a position typically related to the traditionally feminine sphere.  And I'm into that.  Given the choice, I always skip the men.  So when I saw this book, a lady Sherlock, I was pretty excited.  I just happened to see it while I was walking through the stacks at work, and my radar went off.

I loved it.  Really, I almost never rate books five stars (there are a few books I think I should go back and change to five stars, actually) but this one just really delighted me.  The writing is smooth and it's a quick read.  Most of all, I really liked the characters.  Charlotte Holmes is delightful, and I think Thomas did a great job with her, and her characterization was a great choice.  She is not a direct analog to Sherlock Holmes.  She's her own person, quite different from the original, with a distinct personality that really fits wonderfully with the story being told.  Because in this version, we're not simply taking Sherlock Holmes and putting his personality and quirks into the form of another person, Thomas has crafted a new character based on the detective - with his analytical mind and eye for detail - and then had Charlotte Holmes choose Sherlock Holmes (because Charles was too similar to Charlotte) as a pseudonym.  This makes sense, especially taking into account difficulties women had during the time period.  For some fans of the original, this might be a change that makes the stories too different from the source material, but there are little easter eggs and nods.  I liked the other characters, as well, particularly Charlotte's sister Livia.  I'm really interested to see where her story goes in the next books.  I'm not sure how I feel about Treadle yet, but tentatively I like him as well.

The mystery itself was pretty good, as well.  I feel like I'm really critical of the actual "meat" of a mystery story - the case itself, I guess you'd say - but so often I'm left disappointed by the ending.  I complain about that a lot, you might notice if you follow my book talks and reviews here.  But the ending for this book wasn't unsatisfying, though as is somewhat inevitable with Sherlock Holmes stories, the readers aren't really given the tools to solve it for ourselves and must content ourselves with seeing how the great detective unravels it.  A lot of disparate threads came together, but it was done with finesse.  A big complaint I have in mysteries is when a "clue" pops up and there's such attention paid to it in such an obvious way that it's immediately clear it plays a big part in the story.  It pulls me out of the narrative and I personally find it frustrating that it's so noticeable.  Here, there were details that were only included for the sake of the case (of course!  I'm not trying to argue there's really a way around that), but it was much more seamless.  I didn't twig those moments or details immediately.  The only real complaints I had about the case was the ending was a bit too quick - and this is a complaint mostly because I found the beginning slow.  Also, and this is difficult to articulate precisely what I mean, but... the ending was a little...  Well, there was a moment of real awfulness.  And I felt like it was just dealt with too neatly?  Like it was genuinely terrible and then we just moved right past it.

Overall, this was a very enjoyable start to the series.  It was a good, self-contained story, and I'm very much looking forward to reading more about Charlotte Holmes' cases in the next book!