14 marvelous Victorian mysteries

Sherlock Holmes groupies will need to adjust their sights while reading Laurie R. King’s latest Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell mystery, The Murder of Mary Russell. Fans of the series who’ve bought into the fiction that Holmes would’ve ever married in the first place must now further adapt to the idea that the loyal Mrs. Hudson has a lot more to her than sweeping up after Holmes or bringing his breakfast.

King has taken off at full speed on an imaginative if totally far-fetched construction of Clara (or is it Clarissa?) Hudson’s past that creates a whole new storyline and even sets readers up for an exciting sequel. By the end of this fast-moving story, Mrs. Hudson and her longstanding companion, Billy, are party to the new possibility of life separate from their relationship with the famous detective and his wife, Mary Russell.

Russell, at home alone on a spring day, answers her door to a stunning surprise—a rough-and-tumble Australian who claims, with proofs that Russell cannot deny, that he is her landlady’s son. After this shocking confrontation at the Holmes farm in Sussex, Russell disappears, leaving behind a knife and a trail of blood—and one crucial object that offers Holmes a clue to the intruder’s identity.

Mrs. Hudson and Holmes fear for her life, and Holmes sets off on a desperate hunt to discover more about the man he has identified as Samuel Hudson. Tracing the man and his travels brings to the surface all of Holmes’ past history with the woman who would become his landlady, and delves into the exciting back story of her youth, enlivened by her scoundrel of a father and his maritime adventures, as well as a murder that will change both her future and that of Holmes.

Readers, as well as a shocked Russell, will soon have to re-evaluate everything they ever thought they knew about the housekeeper and her relationship to the famous detective, and Russell will be forced to revisit all her underlying knowledge and affection for the woman who has become such an integral part of her life.

Of course we know to take the book’s title with more than a grain of salt. But once you’ve bought into King’s fancies about this ever-growing stable of uncommon characters, get set for more adventures, ones that Conan Doyle surely never envisioned in his wildest dreams.

Veronica Speedwell, the Victorian sleuth in A Curious Beginning, is observant, outspoken and a bit risqué. Fans of Deanna Raybourn’s Lady Julia series will be delighted with this intrepid new heroine in what promises to be a vastly entertaining series.

Readers meet the scientific butterfly-net carrying protagonist immediately after the funeral of her lifelong chaperone. Rather than feeling distraught about being alone in the world, Veronica relishes the idea. Upon returning home from the funeral, a heretofore unknown benefactor offers her transportation to London, and she readily jumps at the opportunity, thus launching a series of events that all center on her mysterious origins. Although unconvinced that someone is after her or something she possesses, Veronica agrees to her benefactor’s request to stay with Mr. Stoker, a damaged man who’s hiding under this alias. Stoker is an explorer, a taxidermist extraordinaire and rather rough around the edges, and their relationship at times sizzles and always provides entertainment with their bickering.

Veronica and Stoker flee London and find sanctuary with a traveling show. In order to remain with the troupe and earn their keep, they must become an act in the show. But after only a few performances, they’re on the run again, this time back to London—where Veronica’s mysterious benefactor has been murdered.

While they piece together clues and try to determine which pursuers are good guys and which are bad, Veronica and Stoker ultimately unravel the surprising secret of her parentage. Readers can be assured that many more adventures are in store for this duo.

Dan Simmons is known for big, serious books like Drood and The Terror that mix real-life history with genre fiction. And while The Fifth Heart is certainly big, it’s also brisk, funny and a hell of a good time.

It starts with a killer premise: What if Henry James, author of The Turn of the Screw, teamed up with one of literature’s most beloved characters, Sherlock Holmes, to solve a murder mystery in turn-of-the-century America?

One step away from suicide in the spring of 1893, Henry stumbles upon Sherlock in Paris. Using his powers of deduction, Sherlock has concluded that the continuity errors in his own life—like Dr. Watson’s ever-changing wives and war wounds—mean that he and his partner are probably fictional characters. And to solve his latest mystery across the Atlantic in Washington, D.C., Sherlock needs Henry’s help—but not as a writer.

“[Y]our rendering of the most exciting adventures you and I might have in America,” quips Sherlock, “would end up with a beautiful young lady from America as the protagonist, various lords and ladies wandering through, verbal opaqueness followed by descriptive obtuseness, and nothing more exciting being allowed to occur in the tale than a verbal faux pas or tea service being late.”

Instead, Sherlock needs Henry because of his real-life relationship with the late Clover Adams, granddaughter-in-law of John Quincy Adams. Each year on the anniversary of her suicide, Clover’s brother receives a card in the mail with five embossed hearts and the typewritten words, “She was murdered.” When Sherlock’s nemesis Moriarty turns up, too, how can Henry reconcile real life with fiction?

It’s a riveting literary puzzle, and Simmons perfectly encapsulates the voices of his larger-than-life characters in a worthy, satisfying homage to Victorian mystery fiction.