Followers of this series about Charlotte Holmes will get the best out of this adventure, but once I had something explained to me, I got into the spirit as well. A TEMPEST AT SEA is the seventh Lady Sherlock book but my first, so you may understand my confusion. Perhaps the author probably thinks everyone knows what is going on and doesn’t want to bore fans with repetition, but some clarity never hurts.

Aboard the RMS Provence as she sails south from Southampton, are Lady Charlotte Holmes, her secret lover, Lord Ash Ingram, the redoubtable Mrs. Watson, and the senior Lady Holmes, along with her maid and Charlotte’s younger sister, Livia Holmes. One of these people carries out detective work under the name of Sherlock Holmes, and it isn’t the man.

Due to tensions between Prussia and England, Charlotte is seeking a dossier that may be among the luggage of a German governess who is caring for young boys on the trip. Or it may not. Disguised as an older widowed lady, Charlotte, and her ally Mrs Watson poke into the affairs of many of the first-class passengers. At first, this isn’t warranted, but suddenly a passenger is found dead in a cabin, and London police Inspector Brighton, who happens to be aboard, takes over the investigation into the death. Charlotte entertains by not letting her invented persona slip while doing her own investigating and still trying to search the nanny’s belongings.

The mystery is a country house adventure, in that nobody can enter or leave from the storm-tossed ship on the Bay of Biscay. By the time we see port, it’s days later at Gibraltar. One detail I enjoyed is when a passenger asks to be shown the engine room, and tips all the staff. The below-deck staff was generally unseen by the wealthy folks and much unappreciated, so this glimpse adds a further dimension. A downside is that solving the mystery involves going over and over everyone’s accounts of where they were at what time, with occasional flashbacks to show what someone was actually doing. In keeping with the literature of the day when the original Sherlock Holmes stories were written, the victim was not generally liked, so the reader doesn’t get emotionally involved in the search.   

With great attention to historical detail, this character-filled crime story is almost a comedy of manners. Sherry Thomas has indeed managed an original take on the Sherlock Holmes series with Lady Sherlock, and A TEMPEST AT SEA will be enjoyed by fans and newcomers alike.