Murder of Mary Russell

 

I was really into the Mary Russell series by Laurie King a little while back, I enjoyed the first one but then the subsequent ones got progressively worse and I stopped reading them. I decided to go back and give some of the later ones a chance. I figured I didn't necessarily need to read them in order. 

Spoilers ahead: Mary does not (thankfully) die. She is home alone one day when a man shows up, claiming to be Mrs. Hudson's illegitimate son. The bulk of the book is Mrs. Hudson's backstory, and maybe that's why I enjoyed it so much, it was really fun! Mrs. Hudson's mother died when she was about 10, leaving behind Clarissa (which was her name then), her younger sister, Alicia, and her drunkard criminal husband, James. James fled to Australia before Clarissa was born to escape the Bishop, a man he owed money to back in London. Clarissa's mother followed him and while she was alive, things were good, but after she died everything fell apart. Clarissa discovered she had a talent for acting and mimicking accents, a talent her shady father soon put to use running con jobs with him. The two of them became very adept criminals and when Clarissa is of age, they return to London (leaving Alicia in Australia) to score a really big prize. 

Things are going well until Clarissa falls in love and ends up pregnant. The man deserts her and she's left to try to muddle through on her own. She meets a young Sherlock Holmes, who agrees to give her a second chance on the condition that she will give the baby to her sister to raise and they'll never speak of her criminal past again. 

Fast forward almost fifty years and Clara (as Sherlock has rechristened her) finds out her sister has passed away. Her son, Samuel, discovers the truth in his mother's old letters and comes to find his birth mother. Oh, and the fortune that James Hudson apparently hid that's never been found. He's convinced Clara knows where it is.