REVIEW: A Tempest at Sea by Sherry Thomas

JennieB- Reviews / Book ReviewsClosed circle mystery / murder mystery / POC author / Series / Sherlock Holmes / Victorian mystery2 Comments

DISCLOSURE: I am Sherry Thomas’s critique partner and critiqued this manuscript but I have not contributed to this review. —Janine.

Dear Sherry Thomas:

This is the seventh book in the Lady Sherlock series, and when I found out it was set on a ship, I was excited. I like closed circle mysteries, though I just discovered that phrase. I knew this wasn’t quite a locked room mystery, so I did some sleuthing (see what I did there?) to discover the term. There’s something elegant about a well-done closed circle mystery. I think I may have also hoped that the mystery here would be easier to follow with a limited number of characters and elements at play. (I am on record as finding the books in this series somewhat hard on my brain; I always need the resolution explained to me at the end, preferably in detail and using simple words.)

I was definitely wrong in assuming that the mystery would be less byzantine than usual.

Charlotte Holmes has boarded the RMS Provence in Southampton with a mission: to retrieve an important dossier for the British government. In the previous book in the series, Miss Moriarty, I Presume , Charlotte faked her own death (with the help of her friends) to escape the deadly attentions of supervillain Moriarty. Now she has been given an opportunity to return to life under the protection of the government, but only if she finds the papers they seek. Her target is a German governess traveling with two young charges.

Due to being supposedly dead, Charlotte is in disguise when she appears publicly aboard the ship. She’s not alone of course; others of her coterie on board include her companion and partner in crime(solving), Mrs. Watson, her lover and friend Lord Ingram Ashburton, and her sister Livia and her distant relative Mrs. Newell.

There are others aboard who are not strangers to Charlotte: Roger Shrewsbury and his wife are traveling aboard the Provence. In book one of the series, Charlotte had Roger deflower her for reasons that are a little fuzzy in my brain but I think had to do with her desire to avoid being married off by her parents. Unfortunately, they were discovered by Mrs. Shrewsbury, and Charlotte was very publicly ruined. Not that she minded much, as it has allowed her to slip into her Sherlock Holmes persona and live independently of her awful parents.

Speaking of which, Charlotte’s awful, terrible mother and her maid, Norbert, show up at the last minute, sailing very unexpectedly eastward. Since the cost of the trip is beyond Lady Holmes’ meager funds, her presence is particularly unsettling. How did she manage to book passage, and why?

Also aboard is Inspector Brighton of Scotland Yard, who served as an antagonist in book five in the series, Murder on Cold Street. He comes to the forefront of the story when a murder occurs during the ship’s first storm-tossed night out of harbor.

But I’m not done with the characters yet! I think I covered previously appearing ones; here are the new characters:

Mr. Arkwright and his sister Miss Arkwright – we first see them in a hotel near the docks before they board the ship. He is a wealthy self-made man traveling back to his home in Australia with his recently rediscovered sister, whom he had left in England years before. Roger Shrewsbury inadvertently and very publicly insults the sister in the hotel lobby and gets a punch in the face from Mr. Arkwright for his trouble.

Mr. Russell, a nasty snobbish man who is traveling with the Shrewsburys; he’s Mrs. Shrewsbury’s cousin.

Mr. Gregory, a dapper middle-aged gentleman who attracts the attention of several women on board.

Frau Schmidt, the aforementioned governess, and her two charges.

Mr. Pratt, about whom I recall nothing except that he was sniffing around Miss Arkwright, likely because of her brother’s wealth.

Various other minor characters: a valet, the ship’s captain, the ship’s doctor, a couple of army officers that appear in a few scenes…I think that’s it.

So, approaching two dozen characters. One of my notes, late in the book when a character is mentioned, was simply, “who?”

As mentioned, a murder occurs on the first night at sea, and fingers start to be pointed everywhere. This both complicates Charlotte’s task (remember the dossier?) and imperils her secret identity. With Inspector Brighton interviewing everyone on board, how long can she avoid being unmasked?

Ash manages to get himself into the interviews as the Inspector’s notetaker, as well as sort of a informal junior detective on the case. I thought that was a little weird, given their antagonistic relationship during Murder on Cold Street, but it does give him the opportunity to brief Holmes on the findings and perform a little misdirection in order to protect her secret.

The story becomes a race against time, as Charlotte and Ash work to solve the murder before her identity is uncovered. The ship is approaching Gibraltar, where police reinforcements will make it even more difficult to continue the disguise.

There is also the question of whether Moriarty has an operative aboard the ship as well, and if so, who?

The resolution of the mystery was clever (they always are!) but also felt a bit random, in part because I wasn’t able to glean any clues that lead me in the right direction ahead of time. That’s not unusual for me with this series, and it may be that I just don’t try enough, but I think the end result is that sense of randomness. There were, however, some other revelations at the end that felt more “earned” and which I found interesting.

The romance between Charlotte and Ash makes some quiet strides: she has become more comfortable with her emotions as they relate to him, a circumstance that Ash thought might never occur.

I’m not quite sure how to grade this one – though I’ve often said that my problems with the complicated plots are just that, my problems (because by this time I know what to expect) – at the same time I feel like A Tempest at Sea had just way more characters than necessary to tell the story. It felt like a good third of them were just there to confuse things. The book took a while for me to get into, and I think the number of characters was part of the problem there, as well.

I’m still looking forward to the next book in the series, especially if we are headed into the home stretch (I believe this was slated to be a 10-book series, at least at one point). I’ll give this book a high B-.

Best,

Jennie

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Jennie

has been an avid if often frustrated romance reader for the past 15 years. In that time she's read a lot of good romances, a few great ones, and, unfortunately, a whole lot of dreck. Many of her favorite authors (Ivory, Kinsale, Gaffney, Williamson, Ibbotson) have moved onto other genres or produce new books only rarely, so she's had to expand her horizons a bit. Newer authors she enjoys include Julie Ann Long, Megan Hart and J.R. Ward, and she eagerly anticipates each new Sookie Stackhouse novel. Strong prose and characterization go a long way with her, though if they are combined with an unusual plot or setting, all the better. When she's not reading romance she can usually be found reading historical non-fiction.

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