REVIEW: A Ruse of Shadows by Sherry Thomas
This entry, the eighth in the Lady Sherlock series, begins with Charlotte Holmes being interrogated in her London hotel room by recently unretired Chief Inspector John Talbot and his erstwhile protege Inspector Treadles. Treadles is ambivalent – he is an ally (and perhaps after a long period of ambivalence, a friend) of Charlotte/Sherlock, and so he’s less thrilled than he would normally be to be working again with the Chief Inspector.
Charlotte, as usual, seems to be calm and unperturbed by the interrogation, the subject of which is the recent murder of Lord Bancroft Ashburton. Bancroft was the brother of Charlotte’s dearest friend and lover, Lord Ingram Ashburton. Charlotte and Bancroft’s own relationship was fraught, to say the least – he had also proposed marriage to her on a couple of occasions, proposals which she turned down. Prior to his death, as a result of her investigation he had been imprisoned for selling government secrets (also, in an earlier book he tried to frame Ash, his own brother, for murder; Bancroft really is quite the baddie).
(I realize I’ve jumped in in media res; to be fair this mimics the book itself, and I doubt anyone who’s not familiar with the series would be able to follow anyway, without a level of exposition that would turn this review into a novella itself.)
The story shifts to two weeks before, setting the scene for the death. Bancroft lures Charlotte to his cushy semi-private prison, Ravensmere. The bait that draws her in is in Paris; Bancroft has arranged to have mercenaries seize control of Charlotte’s sister Bernadine (Bernadine is apparently severely autistic and Charlotte has taken responsibility for her care).
Bancroft, with Bernadine’s fate in his hands, tasks Charlotte with finding his right-hand man, Underwood, who has disappeared. This kicks off another byzantine plot of the sort I’ve come to expect from the series.
It’s hard to synopsize the plot of this book because there’s a lot going on, and I only kept the most tenuous hold on understanding it as I was reading it. Though to be fair, I think I had a slightly better hold on the events as I was reading than I have in some of the previous books in the series. It helped tremendously, as usual, to have things explained at the end.
(One of the reasons it’s absolutely necessary to have an exposition-y section at the end things is that a lot is kept from the reader in the course of these books. There are hints and clues, but there are also things that the main characters are doing behind the scenes that aren’t made clear to the reader at the time. I believe this sort of plotting is in the style of Arthur Conan Doyle in the original Sherlock series, but I’m not 100% sure because as I believe I’ve probably mentioned in a previous review, I’ve only ever read The Hound of the Baskervilles, and that was probably 40 years ago.)
I will try to hit on the high points of the plot as best I can:
Charlotte and Mrs. Watson visit Underwood’s mistress, Mrs. Claiborne (formerly Bancroft’s mistress, which seems like it would be awkward) to try to track Underwood’s last known movements before he disappeared. They learn about his sponsorship of a trio of boxers.
The boxers, Johnny, Mumble and Jessie, end up having complicated backstories that tie them to other characters in the story.
There’s a subplot involving a manor house murder that occurred years before on Christmas Eve. Except not exactly a subplot, because it ties characters together in a way that felt *really* coincidental, but maybe it wasn’t? (I’m considering the possibility that there is some logical reason I missed that the characters in this subplot ended up involved in the main plot. I just don’t know.)
Oh, also, the main character that ends up being involved in both plots is one that’s known to Charlotte and has appeared in at least one (maybe two?) previous books. (Again, coincidental, as far as I could tell?)
This paragraph, late in the book, seemed emblematic of how difficult it can be to keep these characters straight:
“Mrs. Farr,” Holmes asked, “Mr. Waters said he saw Mrs. Claiborne once, when she delivered something to Mr. Esposito’s house on Mr. Underwood’s behalf. He never identified Mrs. Claiborne to you?”
Also appearing in the story is Charlotte’s sister Livia, who is acting as Charlotte’s eyes and ears in Aix-en-Provence and wondering if her secret love Stephen Marbleton is imprisoned nearby (by the dastardly Moriarty, who as usual lurks in the background throughout the story).
The Lady Sherlock series keeps me on my toes, and perhaps because of that it can take a while for me to get into the story. In this case it wasn’t until the last third or so that I felt fully absorbed in the story.
Still, A Ruse of Shadows ended up being a strong entry into the series, and by the end there were some interesting advances in a couple of relationships that I think fans of the series are invested in. My grade for this is a B+.
Best,
Jennie
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