Good Night, Mr. Holmes

By Caroline Nelson Douglas

Book One of the Irene Adler Adventures

 

After losing her job and being turned out of her lodgings, prim, proper, parson's daughter Penelope Huxleigh is wandering the streets of London wondering what to do next when a street urchin attempts to steal her carpetbag. The beautiful, well-dressed Irene Adler rescues her, takes her for tea, and after stealing the leftover pastries invites Penelope to stay with her. Thus begins Nell's (as Irene decides to call her) friendship with Irene Adler, opera singer and private detective. Irene, who supplements her opera career by taking care of other people's business, watches people as a hobby, has no known past, occasionally dresses as a man, has an ever so slightly skewed, but nonetheless firmly in place set of morals, shocks Nell quite often but nevertheless soon becomes her best friend. Nell's diaries are occasionally supplemented with Dr. Watson's unpublished notes and resound with Nell's refrain of "Irene, no!". Irene always been one of my favorite characters from the Holmes lore as one of the few people, the only woman, to defeat the infamous Sherlock Holmes, and in this book she is utterly in her element. Loved it, loved the sequel, loved the whole wonderful series! While this may not be my favorite version of Holmes, the well written and sometimes hysterically funny characters of  Irene, Nell, Casanova (Nell's foul-mouthed second or third-hand parrot, but that's another story), "Willie" a.k.a the King of Bohemia, and Godfrey Norton more than make up for it.