Romance novelist turned mystery writer author Sherry Thomas brings us book 8 in the Lady Sherlock series, A RUSE OF SHADOWS. This series has such a marvelous reimagining of the Sherlockian world! Charlotte Holmes is a most unconventional young lady. Charlotte, with the help of Mrs. John Watson, masquerades as a male detective with the sobriquet of Sherlock Holmes. Struggling to evade a forced society marriage, Charlotte was cast out of the bosom of her family but is now the sole source of support for her two sisters.
In defiance of Victorian mores, Charlotte has also taken her childhood friend Lord Ingram as her lover. Thomas’ works have strong feminist themes, and it is delightful to see women so competently navigating and/or foiling the criminal world. Lord Ingram ably assists Charlotte in solving crimes, as do a large case of other characters. The number of secondary characters has grown dizzyingly large, and the many complex interconnections between them can be tough to remember from book to book. A RUSE OF SHADOWS jumps immediately into the height of the action without much reference or re-fleshing out of the backstory, so readers must be fully conversant with the prior books and their myriad details.
The main mystery plot unwinds in reverse here. Events are presented as a series of flashbacks interposed with the current timeline, where Charlotte is being interrogated by a higher-up in Scotland Yard as a suspect in a murder case. I found the construct of the reserve timeline with the further confusion of interspersed flashbacks to be overly complicated. The unnecessarily intricate timeline, the huge cast of interwoven characters, and the necessity of being fully conversant in the prior books combine to make Thomas’ A RUSE OF SHADOWS fall flat for me.
Charlotte Holmes is accustomed to solving crimes, not being accused of them, but she finds herself in a dreadfully precarious position as the bestselling Lady Sherlock series continues.
Charlotte’s success on the RMS Provence has afforded her a certain measure of time and assurance. Taking advantage of that, she has been busy, plotting to prise the man her sister loves from Moriarty’s iron grip.
Disruption, however, comes from an unexpected quarter. Lord Bancroft Ashburton, disgraced and imprisoned as a result of Charlotte’s prior investigations, nevertheless manages to press Charlotte into service: Underwood, his most loyal henchman, is missing and Lord Bancroft wants Charlotte to find Underwood, dead or alive.
But then Lord Bancroft himself turns up dead and Charlotte, more than anyone else, meets the trifecta criteria of motive, means, and opportunity. Never mind rescuing anyone else, with the law breathing down her neck, can Charlotte save herself from prosecution for murder?
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