A Study in Scarlet Women by Sherry Thomas

Book Synopsis: With her inquisitive mind, Charlotte Holmes has never felt comfortable with the demureness expected of the fairer sex in upper class society. But even she never thought that she would become a social pariah, an outcast fending for herself on the mean streets of London. When the city is struck by a trio of unexpected deaths and suspicion falls on her sister and her father, Charlotte is desperate to find the true culprits and clear the family name. She’ll have help from friends new and old—a kind-hearted widow, a police inspector, and a man who has long loved her. But in the end, it will be up to Charlotte, under the assumed name Sherlock Holmes, to challenge society’s expectations and match wits against an unseen mastermind.

I have finally finished my August TBR Pick, A Study in Scarlet Women, and it was delightful! It's great new spin on the characters in Sherlock Holmes.

Charlotte has never had much patience for the conventions of her society and devises a plan to free herself of them.  It goes a little differently than she thought, and she finds herself in narrower straits than she had expected.  She had dabbled as Sherlock Holmes a bit before her fall from grace, sending notes through her friend Lord Ingram to assist Inspector Treadles now and then, but that comes to a halt once she's taken the reigns of her own future.

When suspicion falls on her own family in some mysterious deaths, she takes a chance and sends a letter to the newspaper as Sherlock suggesting the deaths are connected, and the ball really gets rolling.  She lucks into a widowed benefactoress, and that's when Sherlock can really get down to work.

Charlotte embodies everything we love about Sherlock, the attention to detail and the indifference to society's mores, though she does have to jump through some hoops to be taken seriously, being a woman in Victorian London.  Her cast of supporting characters is wonderful and lifelike as we see glimpses into their own lives outside of their connection to Charlotte, making them real people we can care about.

I am looking forward to the next book in the series, which just came out at the beginning of September, A Conspiracy in Belgravia. I see that Sherry Thomas is also a romance writer, so I will have to check some of those out as well!