RogerBW's Blog

A Ruse of Shadows, Sherry Thomas 06 August 2025

2024 mystery story, eighth of the Lady Sherlock series. Charlotte Holmes is accused of murder, and the circumstances are explained in flashback.

Even a regular reader of the series may have some trouble keeping up; there's an awful lot going on here, and since it's over a year since I read the previous book I did have some trouble remembering who was who among the minor recurring characters.

There's also quite a lot of plot: Charlotte is asked by a police contact to look into an old locked-room murder, but she also has to try to track down the missing minion of an old enemy, now in genteel imprisonment. And of course Moriarty is still lurking in the background.

Indeed, I found the first few chapters surprisingly unengaging, and put the book aside for a while. Things do pick up once the investigation kicks in, and since Charlotte is mostly viewed through others' eyes doing her work rather than explaining it, I found that this book achieved what the Sherlock Holmes stories themselves mostly do not: the portrayal of an extremely powerful mind at work, building and modifying structures from a minimum of information.

That said, everyone has at least one secret, and most of them are up to at least two hidden things, and it might have been helpful to take notes. (There is a cast list at the start, which may be a good basis for this, but many characters use aliases much of the time. And at least one appears in the list twice under different names, because the connection between them is a secret to be discovered later.)

I think it does all fit together in the end, but I didn't feel I was staying on top of it the way I normally do with a mystery; this is less a participatory puzzle, like most mysteries, and more an occasion to look on with awe at the Great Detective. (Not exclusively, but there's a lot of that. And to be fair I did enjoy it)

Very much for the series reader, and I don't mean that in a bad way, but a newcomer would probably be lost in short order. If you enjoyed book 7, carry on with book 8.

[Buy this at Amazon] and help support the blog. ["As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases."]

Previous in series: A Tempest At Sea | Series: Lady Sherlock

Add A Comment

Your Name
Your Email
Your Comment

Note that I will only approve comments that relate to the blog post itself, not ones that relate only to previous comments. This is to ensure that the blog remains outside the scope of the UK's Online Safety Act (2023).

Your submission will be ignored if any field is left blank, but your email address will not be displayed. Comments will be processed through markdown.

Search
Archive
Tags 1920s 1930s 1940s 1950s 1960s 1970s 1980s 1990s 2000s 2010s 2300ad 3d printing action advent of code aeronautics aikakirja anecdote animation anime army astronomy audio audio tech base commerce battletech bayern beer boardgaming book of the week bookmonth chain of command children chris chronicle church of no redeeming virtues cold war comedy computing contemporary cornish smuggler cosmic encounter coup covid-19 crime crystal cthulhu eternal cycling dead of winter disaster doctor who documentary drama driving drone ecchi economics en garde espionage essen 2015 essen 2016 essen 2017 essen 2018 essen 2019 essen 2022 essen 2023 essen 2024 existential risk falklands war fandom fanfic fantasy feminism film firefly first world war flash point flight simulation food garmin drive gazebo genesys geocaching geodata gin gkp gurps gurps 101 gus harpoon historical history horror horrorm science fiction hugo 2014 hugo 2015 hugo 2016 hugo 2017 hugo 2018 hugo 2019 hugo 2020 hugo 2021 hugo 2022 hugo 2023 hugo 2024 hugo 2025 hugo-nebula reread in brief avoid instrumented life javascript julian simpson julie enfield kickstarter kotlin learn to play leaving earth linux liquor lovecraftiana lua mecha men with beards mpd museum music mystery naval noir non-fiction one for the brow openscad opera parody paul temple perl perl weekly challenge photography podcast poetry politics postscript powers prediction privacy project woolsack pyracantha python quantum rail raku ranting raspberry pi reading reading boardgames social real life restaurant review reviews romance rpg a day rpgs ruby rust scala science fiction scythe second world war security shipwreck simutrans smartphone south atlantic war squaddies stationery steampunk stuarts suburbia superheroes suspense television the resistance the weekly challenge thirsty meeples thriller tin soldier torg toys trailers travel type 26 type 31 type 45 typst vietnam war war wargaming weather wives and sweethearts writing about writing x-wing young adult
Special All book reviews, All film reviews
Produced by aikakirja v0.1