A GLORIOUS SHERLOCK HOLMES-INSPIRED MYSTERY FOR FANS OF NITA PROSE AND JANICE HALLETT
London, 1932.
When Harriet White rebuffs the advances of her boss at the Baker Street building society where she works, she finds herself demoted to a new position… a very unusual position. Deep in the postal
department beneath the bank, she is tasked with working her way through a mountain of correspondence addressed to Baker Street’s most famous resident: Mr Sherlock Holmes.
Seemingly undeterred by the fact that Sherlock Holmes doesn’t exist, letter after letter arrives, beseeching him to help solve mysteries, and Harry diligently replies to each writer with the same response: Mr Holmes has retired from detective work and now lives in Sussex, keeping bees.
Until one entreaty catches her eye. It’s from a village around five miles from Harry’s family estate, about a young woman who went to London to work as a domestic, then disappeared soon afterwards in strange circumstances. Intrigued, Harry decides, just this once, to take matters into her own hands.
And so, the case of the missing maid is opened…
Holly Hepburn has wanted to write books for as long she can remember but she was too scared to try. One day she decided to be brave and dipped a toe into the bubble bath of romantic fiction with her first novella, Cupidity, and she’s never looked back. She often tries to be funny to be funny, except for when faced with traffic wardens and border control staff. Her favourite things are making people smile and Aidan Turner.
She’s tried many jobs over the years, from barmaid to market researcher and she even had a brief flirtation with modelling. These days she is mostly found writing.
She lives near London with her grey tabby cat, Portia. They both have an unhealthy obsession with Marmite.
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My thoughts: assigned to the basement of the Abbey Road Building Society, which for many years occupied Baker Street, including 221B – home of the road’s most famous resident – Sherlock Holmes, Harriet ‘Harry’ White, is assigned the role of answering the stacks of post sent to the detective.
For the most part she replies as his secretary, thanking people for writing and apologising that the great detective is retired, as per The Last Bow, and no longer taking on cases. However one catches her eye, involving a family from the village on her family estate, and she endeavors to investigate it.
In doing so she recruits family friend Oliver, a solicitor, to help out, dresses up in disguises and attempts to act like the famous Holmes, even if he’s fictional.
This is great fun, funny and witty. Harry is a delightful protagonist and a determined investigator. She also manages to continue to answer the stacks of letters.
Having been to the Sherlock Holmes museum in Baker Street, where these letters now go, although I don’t think they get answered these days, it was lovely to think that someone was writing back and allowing people to continue to believe that someone out there was Holmes, even though as he lived in the Victorian era, he’d be very dead by now.
This is the start of a series and based on this first book and the author’s previous work, this should be a great series. The characters are fun, the story entertaining and clever, I can’t wait!
*I was kindly gifted a copy of this book in exchange for taking part in this blog tour, but all opinions remain my own.
ramblingmads 