The year is 1891. News has reached London that the great detective Sherlock Holmes has met his death after a terrible fight above the Reichenbach Falls in Switzerland. Many people will regret his passing, but none more so than his loyal landlady Mrs Hudson. She is already missing his powerful presence in the house, but she is also getting increasingly troubled by people knocking on the door and asking if the great man can solve their problems. Thus it is that she, together with her new maid of all work, the sparky, uneducated East End girl Fanny Annie Grubbins, decide to take up what Fanny Annie calls detectivising for themselves.
So yes, these are crime novels, and the lady detectives prove to be remarkably adept at solving the mysteries even though this means they have to step outside the confines of their safe lives in 221b Baker Street. But the greatest strength of the books is the delightful characters of Mrs Hudson and Fanny Annie, and the highly entertaining comedy of their interaction. Mrs H is a respectable middle-class widow, a great churchgoer and a keen supporter of many worthy charitable causes, while Fanny Annie has been more or less scooped out of the gutter to be given a chance to better herself. But as they start working together, each discovers that they have things to learn from their very diverse partner. Mrs H has some education and knows her way around the more respectable areas of London, but Fanny Annie has a huge fund of native know-how, gained from her upbringing in the seedy underworld of the East End. She is, moreover, extremely willing to learn, and throws herself into her new experiences with admirable enthusiasm.
Each of the three novels can stand alone, as each sees the ladies solving a separate crime. But I'd recommend reading them in the order of their publication: The Detective Ladies of Baker Street is the first, followed by Jack the Nipper, and finally Death Holds a Seance. Then you can see the development of the ladies' relationship and also that of Mrs H with Inspector Trengrove of Scotland Yard -- there seems to be an attraction between them, but the Inspector can't accept that detective work is a suitable job for a lady. Perhaps we will hear more about this as further novels appear, which I for one hope that they will.
So far these novels are only available on Kindle and Kobo, but paperbacks are due out later this year.
