A Study in Scarlet Women

Charlotte Holmes is too clever to hide it, and she has paid for that. After a personal scandal she is cast out of respectable society, disowned by her family and left to get by on the edges of London.

Then three people die without warning, and suspicion lands on her sister and her father. Staying out of sight is no longer an option. Charlotte takes the name Sherlock Holmes and sets out to investigate the deaths herself, so that the people she loves are not blamed for them.

Three allies back her: a kind widow, a police inspector who is sympathetic to her cause, and a man who has quietly loved her for years. Their opponent is a mastermind, one whom society would never imagine a woman could catch.

The book is a historical detective novel in Victorian London that recasts Sherlock Holmes as a woman, and it begins a series. Mystery plotting runs beside a romance that builds slowly, and the narrative takes a pointed look at the limits placed on women of Charlotte's class. The pace is measured and puzzle-driven, with the romantic thread developing gradually.