Oh my gosh, I have such feels about this book. I had high expectations for it and I was not disappointed, and my challenge here is to try to sum up my feelings in a literary way instead of just doing this:
A Study in Scarlet Women is the first book in the new Lady Sherlock series. Charlotte Holmes is an upper-class young woman who seems to be on the autism spectrum. She does not wish to marry and after an unfortunate series of events she sets up shop as a private detective. However, Charlotte believes that men will not take her seriously if they know that she’s a woman. With the help of a former actress named Mrs. Watson, Charlotte sets up a detective practice for a man of her own invention: “Sherlock Holmes.” She creates an identity for herself as Sherlock Holmes’ sister, who passes messages to the great detective while he suffers from illness.
I’m going to start off here with the one thing I didn’t like about the book, and that’s the actual mystery. Full disclosure: while I often enjoy mysteries, the actual mystery is usually the least interesting part of the book for me. I like mysteries because their format allows authors to explore a huge range of characters and times and places. So it’s not surprising that the mystery itself is my least favorite part of this book.
Still, I suspect that even an ardent mystery reader will think this is not the strongest mystery ever written. The cast of characters is confusing – not in the sense that their motives are murky, etc., but in the sense that it’s very difficult to keep track of who is whom and how people are connected to each other. The reader has no reason to care about any of the deceased, and the biggest sense of urgency comes from the fact that Charlotte’s sister Livia is a suspect in one of the murders. But that sense of urgency is repeatedly downplayed because no one is taking any actual legal action against Livia (yet). It’s a threat, but it doesn’t feel as looming as it should.
Onto things I did like…
The characters and their interactions in this book are superlative. I love the way Charlotte learns to blend into the world for strictly strategic purposes. I love the respect she shows to an older sister, Bernadine, who is completely non-verbal even as an adult, and who likes to spin things, like toy windmills and spools on a string. I also love that Charlotte does not show disdain towards others because of her own high intelligence – indeed, she tends to bring out the intelligence in other people through her own confidence in them. Livia, Mrs. Watson, and others are shown to have their own kinds of intelligence and to have insights into emotion and business acumen that Charlotte lacks.
And then there are the supporting characters – those wonderful, wonderful supporting characters. Livia is ferociously protective of her sisters, and Charlotte’s suggestion to her at the end of the book (which I won’t spoil) made me incredibly happy.
Mrs. Watson won my heart forever by making herself Charlotte’s business manager:
Mrs. Watson pressed the heavy coin into Charlotte’s palm and closed her fingers around it. “Remind yourself that you’re far more likely to undercharge than to overcharge, my dear, because you don’t yet understand your own value and you’ve never been taught to demand your full worth.”
She smiled. “That’s why I appointed myself the bursar of this operation, because I’ve had to learn both.”
There’s a bit of a romance, and apparently there will be more romance as the series develops, but I found the romance to be much less compelling than the relationships between women. There’s a common thread of women helping women. Not all women do this, but the ones that do are portrayed in a positive light. Livia and Charlotte help each other and Bernadine. Mrs. Watson and Charlotte help each other physically and emotionally. The housekeeper and the cook at an estate try to help the younger female servants by protecting them against sexual predation.
Speaking of sexual predation, towards the end of the book the topic of child abuse and molestation comes up. It’s not graphic but it is upsetting and potentially triggering. This book finds many ways to deal with the vulnerable positions of women in Victorian society, including the fates of women in unhappy marriages, women who lose their reputations, women who are disabled, and women who struggle for other reasons to survive financially and emotionally. That doesn’t make the book depressing. Instead it carries a strong message that women are capable, courageous, and can accomplish great things against great odds when they band together.
I honestly do not care about any of the mysteries that may occur in the next book. But I can’t WAIT to find out what Charlotte, Livia, and Mrs. Watson are up to. I hope it involves all of them, and Bernadine, living somewhere wonderful and eating plum cake, because that cake sounded amazing. And I hope it involves them being protective of each other, empowering, and smart. The excitement is palpable!
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I second the B rating, for the exact same reasons. The mystery was just okay, but Charlotte, Livia, and the wonderful Mrs. Watson were outstanding. I’m also very interested in the development of Charlotte’s arch-nemesis (come on, it’s a Holmes story, you know there’s an arch-nemesis lurking somewhere!).
However, there was another undertone to this book that I found absolutely wrenching, and that was the genuine awfulness of trying to survive as a single woman in London during the 1890s. Until she meets Mrs. Watson, Charlotte struggles for the most basic necessities such as food and a place to sleep. The united front of the city against a woman who doesn’t fit in is utterly merciless. That shouldn’t be taken as a deterrent to reading the book; Charlotte overcomes her circumstances with the assistance of other women, which was awesome and very satisfying. But the author paints a very poignant picture of the helplessness and injustice women faced, similar to the section in “A Room of One’s Own,” by Virginia Woolf, where the author imagines what would have happened if Shakespeare had a sister.
Well, that made me go immediately to buy the book on Amazon. And it seems that I also gave to Nature Conservancy, which is a great organization, so win-win!
Thank you for the review.
I love her previous works!.
I won’t miss this one.
This does sound good! Thanks for your review, Carrie.
I am very excited to read this, it sounds right up my alley. If you enjoyed the relationships between the female characters and a historical look at women’s roles, I would recommend the show Bletchley Circle. It is a British series set in the early 1950s about four women who had been codebreakers during the war. One of the women notices a pattern in a series of crimes and when the police don’t listen, she gets the gang back together. The mystery element is very strong, but I also found the portrayal of women’s roles in a post-war England fascinating.
I’m happy to contribute my Plum Tart recipe, it’s delicious!
Crust:
1.5 c. flour
1/2 tsp salt
1/2 c. cold butter
1/4 c. cold water
Filling:
4 c. pitted & quartered Italian prune plums
1 c. sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1/2 c. flour
1 tsp. baking powder
Cinnamon(optional)
Preheat oven to 425F.
For the crust: Combine the flour & salt in a food processor, cut in chunks of the butter, and mix until crumbly(I do this by hand because I don’t have a food processor)
Add the cold water and mix, just until the dough forms a ball.
Roll out the dough on a floured surface to fit either a large deep dish pie pan or a 9″ square pan(I don’t roll it, I just press the dough out by hand into the pan). The dough should cover the the bottom and sides of the pan.
For the filling: combine the plums with 1/2 c. sugar(you can cut the amount of sugar if you prefer it less sweet). You can also add cinnamon if you like it. Spoon the fruit mixture into the crust.
Beat the eggs with the remaining sugar and vanilla, add the flour and baking powder and mix. It will be goopy. Pour it over the plums in the pan.
Bake for 10 min. at 425, then reduce heat to 350 and 30-40 min, till lightly browned.
I love the idea of this book – mostly because it totally sounds like the old Russian movie My Dearly Beloved Detective where Shirley Holmes and Jane Watson run a detective agency and pretend that there is a real Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. Yekaterina Vasilyeva and Galina Shchepetnova are great in it – and I think it’s up on Youtube with subtitles, too.
Just wanted to say that this review prompted me to move A STUDY IN SCARLET WOMEN from, “I’ll read this soon,” to “I’ll read this right now” & having finished it, one bit of the review has really stuck with me–
“There’s a common thread of women helping women. Not all women do this, but the ones that do are portrayed in a positive light.”
Because it had me thinking about generosity & the way skill and ability is distributed in the book. Sherlock is an extraordinary character who holds the focus, but Thomas distributed some of canon Holmes’s skills to other characters, like the way Mrs. Watson is the expert on costumes and accents. It struck me as generous; this isn’t a book about one amazing person & her circle of admirers. The supporting characters do some of the heavy lifting, contribute materially to the success of the enterprise.
It made me think that there’s an authorial generosity at play here, which I really appreciated.
@Erin: Yes, you’re totally right – the canonical collection of Holmes’ skills are spread across several characters. Watson’s, too, now that I think more about it. I hope you enjoyed the book!
I’ve just finished this book and I’m SO HAPPY it’s been talked about so much by Smart Bitches, because it’s brilliant! I loved it so much I’ll recommend it to everybody! And why oh why it’ll take soooo long for the next book to come out? I hope there will be some fanfiction. And, boy, would I love to see a movie based on it! I’d probably run to see it, actually.
That was the best Watson I’ve encountered ever! I mean, Holmes was great but Watson! It was love at first read. I normally prefer Holmes but Mrs Watson was something special. To see her as a mother figure was unexpected but it… fit. And it is so refreshing that she’s a partner who has some real skills not just makes a nice background for Holmes. It was also amazing that this was not a fully formed perfect and impenetrable Holmes. Charlotte while brilliant was also human. She had what could be percieved as flaws. Her sense of taste for example. And she really needed people in her life. And she liked them. Not just Watson.
I also really liked the inspector. And his wife. I’d love to read more about her. The mystery was fine, at least I didn’t guess why what happened happened. I loved that it was in accordance with one of the main themes- how hard a woman’s life was in those times. It still is but the crime like that wouldn’t even be talked about back then. It’s a very modern choice of a crime. But it could’ve deffinetely happened. And I liked that choice and the modern view of the lives of those women. And how not normal it seems now.
Can’t wait to read more and that again for the recommendation, dear Smart bitches!