The sixth Lady Sherlock mystery is filled with twists and turns. Since their previous adventure, Charlotte and Mrs. Watson have been poised to flee the attentions of Moriarty. They are surprised and more than a little suspicious when Moriarty comes to hire them to check on the welfare of his daughter.

Moriarty's daughter has long since fled her father and taken refuge in an occult community. However, none of Moriarty's watchers have been able to confirm that she is still there. Unable to refuse the assignment from Moriarty, Charlotte and Mrs. Watson leave town to visit the community where they discover all sorts of secrets and mysteries.

Meanwhile in town, Olivia finds herself with a mystery of her own when she sees her beloved Mr. Marbleton and intercepts a clue from him which may lead to his escape from Moriarty. As she unravels mysterious hints, Lord Ingram assists her and begins his own affair with Charlotte while waiting for his divorce to make it way through the House of Lords.

This was a nicely twisty tale. I enjoyed Charlotte's new relationship with Lord Ingram. I also liked the clue they found using microphotography. I liked the way it reintroduced characters from earlier books in the series. ( )

I love this series so much and this book is the best yet. The new characters introduced are well drawn and our regulars really shine. There's some really interesting threading around expectations of women in the era and I love what is being set up. Do I have to wait a year for the next one? ( )

Charlotte is approached by Moriarty, incognito, and asked to investigate his daughter.

I started reading this in April and finished it in November. I didn’t dislike it, it just didn’t… grab me? Not sure why. Perhaps because, knowing how slow-burn this series has been with some of the long-running narrative threads, I wasn’t eagerly anticipating any significant developments? ( )

A 100, need a break from this series

This is the first book in this series that I haven't enjoyed. The plot just felt SO convoluted. I'm totally fine if a mystery is more clever than I am and I'm not able to solve things before they're revealed, truly. And I have no qualms with 'complex' either. But this wasn't that. This felt like it was so determined to be extremely impressive that it sacrificed its claim to practicality or believability. Previously it seemed like there were just a couple genius characters and we could kinda follow them along. But now there are like half a dozen all playing this complicated chess game, each 20 moves ahead. And it felt like we hardly even got any chapters from the perspective of the brilliant characters, I suppose so that we could be kept more in the dark, so we were left with just seeing them occasionally give each other a look to make sure *we* knew that *they* knew things, lol. And the characters we did see events through felt extra gullible and clueless, more than they previously have, (maybe so we could feel more clever than someone at least?), but it felt like being dropped back into 6th grade while watching your peers go off to college without you or something. Being so entirely kept out of the loop. And even looking back at the answers with hindsight there's no satisfying feeling of 'ahh, it was all there in front of me!' like there usually is. Just this sense of 'Really? That was your plan?' and 'Please! That's like a one in a billion shot, there's no way you came to that instantly solely through the powers of deduction'. We're just supposed to trust that the characters really ARE nearly omnipotently clever apparently. I'm not sure events really hold up under much scrutiny though. Maybe I wouldn't mind so much usually, except the whole thing felt like such a slog to get through. It's weird though to go along so happily with 5 books and then be so annoyed with the sixth. I'll still continue with the series though. ( )