1868: Cambridge. A young Sherlock Holmes accompanies his brother, Mycroft, to Cambridge, to investigate a curious death, in a case which will prove formative for both brothers.
1893: London. Doctor Watson, still mourning the apparent death of his friend, is invited by Inspector Lestrade to consult on a gruesome murder, which has all the hallmarks of the Ripper.
Two cases. Four investigators.
A locked-room mystery. A trunk murder. Missing girls. And a conspiracy involving the highest echelons of Victorian society. All linked by one, bloody thread …
1868: Cambridge. A young Sherlock Holmes accompanies his brother, Mycroft, to Cambridge, to investigate a curious death, in a case which will prove formative for both brothers.
1893: London. Doctor Watson, still mourning the apparent death of his friend, is invited by Inspector Lestrade to consult on a gruesome murder, which has all the hallmarks of the Ripper.
Two cases. Four investigators.
A locked-room mystery. A trunk murder. Missing girls. And a conspiracy involving the highest echelons of Victorian society. All linked by one, bloody thread …
From The Case Notes of Sherlock Holmes,
Cambridge, 1867
Pretty McDonald grew up in and around the foul courts, cellars, and dosshouses off Lion’s Yard, St. Tibb’s, and St. Andrew’s.
There she kept house for her father, her mother having succumbed to consumption at Eastertide.
Cut from good Scot’s cloth, Pretty was well-named. Like the stubborn flower that blooms in wasteland, she’d grown well-favored among the Cambridge sinks.
This afternoon found her running late. Every task frustrated her. The fabrics in Sayle’s1 were too pricy for her pocket, forcing her to make do with a little ribbon and thread instead. Her father’s favourite bakery on Derby Street2 had sold out of the maslin3 bread he liked. The butcher’s was out of brisket, too, necessitating another journey across town.
Before she realized it, the sun had begun to drop behind the rows of tightly clustered buildings. Daylight almost exhausted, the evening shadows began to creep in. Still, she was determined to complete her errands.
Along St. Andrew’s she trotted, past the tailors and the bake house, where a little crowd of urchins gathered every evening, to claim a warm spot up against the walls.
Pretty was thirteen now — a surrogate mother of three — and too old to believe in silly stories. Whether she admitted it or not, though, she was still child enough to be afraid of the dark.
She’d heard the whispers. It wasn’t only the bake house girls who were “vanished.” She’d known a few girls, no older than herself, who’d stayed out too long after dark, and never returned home. Others had gone into service, only for their families to discover that the fine house and fine family their daughter worked for didn’t exist.
Likely the missing had got lucky. Found better prospects, elsewhere. That’s what her father had said, his voice sober, measured, a blade of worry chipping away at his habitual smile.
“No wondering, now. Come straight home once your chores are done,” he’d say, trying to sound unconcerned.
The lamp lighters were late that evening. As the gloom grew, Pretty pulled her shawl closer.
It had been a warm day, but she’d missed lunch. Breakfast too, and she was starting to feel that chill that comes when the body has exhausted its reserves and wants rest.
It was in that attitude, bone-tired, shawl pulled up to her nose, basket gipped tightly, that she ran directly into a figure loitering in an unlit ally.
She made her apologies, adding a quick, little curtsy, as she’d been taught to do. She was about to rush on when something about the figure she’d collided with caught her eye.
It was a girl, no taller than herself, dressed in a gaudy, purple gown. An elaborate bonnet, perched on her head, was festooned with a magazine of novelties which, to Pretty’s critical eye, made her look somewhat ridiculous.
At first Pretty merely blinked, wondering why the girl seemed so familiar. Eventually, as her eyes adjusted to the half-light, she began to pick out features amongst the ribbons and trim — flaxen hair, set in long ringlets, a tiny nose, and wide, almond-shaped eyes. “Why, Jenny!” she cried, “Where ever have you been? Everyone’s been frantic about you. Come, now, it’s getting dark. Let me walk you home.”
The girl backed away, her face a picture of terror. “Lord, I’m for it now. I only wanted to catch a glimpse of Ma one more time,” she whispered, turning white-faced.
“Well then, take my hand. We’ll go see her together.” Pretty stepped closer. She could see her friend was scared, but hoped that a smile, combined with a kind word from someone she knew, would ease her fear.
The girl shook her head sadly. “I’ve been taken by the fairies and can never come home again,” she replied.
“Why, whatever do you mean?” Pretty edged closer, thinking to grab the girl’s arm, before she bolted.
Jenny opened her mouth, gave a queer sort of silent scream, turned heel and did, indeed, bolt.
Pretty had known Jenny her whole life. Their parents were friends. The girl — who was a little younger than herself — had a reputation for being slow on the uptake. If she was in trouble, it would be none of her own making.
Besides, she couldn’t let her vanish again. Not when it would break her mother’s heart.
She hoisted up her skirts and gave chase.
It was dark in ernest now. The road up ahead divided. Right would take her to Christ’s Lane. Ahead ran Hobson’s. Left would eventually lead to Petty Cury4. In between lay a warren of alleyways, workshops, lean-toos, dead-ends. She had to be careful. It would be easy to lose herself in this maze.
She could hear the girl’s boots telegraphing the direction of her wild flight, but she could barely see. Then: there! As the moon broke through the clouds, she caught a glimpse of the tiny figure’s bobbing bonnet. Up, ahead, she spied two figures — one man, one woman — and Jenny, panting hard, racing towards them.
Pretty would never have approached a lone man, but the presence of the woman gave her the courage to run forward.
It was too dark to see anything other than spectral shapes silhouetted in the gloom. The woman appeared tall, strangely elegant, despite the cheap shawl draped across her head and shoulders. The man beside her wore a long frock coat, with a wide-brimmed shovel hat5 of the sort that Pretty had seen only in picture books.
“Sorry Mum,” she bobbed towards the lady, “sorry Father,” she added, taking the black suit he wore for clerical vestments, “I’m after speaking to my friend.”
On being addressed, the pair shrank deeper into the shadows.
“She’s only little and her Ma is awful afraid for her.”
The woman started forward. Pretty saw the priest place a restraining arm on his companion. “You’re mistaken. The girl’s with us. Run on home now,” he said. “Go quickly, before you’re missed.” There was something about the way he said those last two words that turned Pretty’s blood to ice.
She glanced at Jenny, who stood beside the man, head down, her eyes steadfastly fixed on the road.
“If you could just come with me to speak to your Ma …” Pretty began.
Again the woman started forward. Again the priest put out a hand to stop her. “We’ve business to attend to,” he said briskly. “Now, run along and stop bothering us.”
Pretty wasn’t a willful child. Nor was she one to abandon a friend in need. She changed tack.
“Oh, please, Mum, won’t you help?” she stepped closer, looking for some sign of compassion in the lady’s eyes.
Instead, what she saw was a pair of strange, tinted spectacles, and a full mouth, set in a wicked grin.
She’d barely begun to wonder why someone should wear such strange eye-protectors in the dark, when there was a hiss from the woman’s companion. A curse, a raised hand, and a flash of silver followed. A knife!
She flinched, tumbling backwards in her eagerness to avoid the oncoming blow.
The priest saw his chance, grabbed Jenny’s hand, and began walking rapidly away. “If you’re going to do her,” he snapped back to his companion, “then be quick about it.”
Like an actor preparing for a performance, the woman took a deep breath and advanced, the knife poised in her outstretched hand.
Pretty heard the swish of the blade, saw the beginnings of a sneer spread across the woman’s elongated face.
Now it was her turn to scream. She gave a high, choked yelp, scrambled to her feet, and ran as she’d never run before.
Heart pounding, lungs burning, expecting every moment to feel the shock of cold steel in her back, she hit Regent’s Street at a gallop.
The lamp-lighters were at work now. In truth, the streets were no less dark with the application of such modern marvels, but the shadows were less thick. Less dangerous.
Even so Pretty ran on, convinced that the wind behind her was the hot breath of her pursuer on her neck.
More than once she felt the swish of a knife blade behind her — close, very close. More than once, she felt a tug on her skirts, as though someone were grasping at her clothing, trying to bring her down.
She ran instinctively, with no particular goal in mind, other than losing her pursuer. But, finally, as each golden flame flickered to life, the glow of the lamp-light began to work its magic.
Indeed it had always felt like magic to Pretty, who’d grown up in rooms whose only illumination was provided by the smoky glimmer of burning tallow.
Reassured, she slowed her pace, glanced back to check she was no longer being followed, then finally stopped.
She walked home, as a child might. Jumping between each pool of light as she worked her way back to where she’d first seen Jenny. She desperately wanted to check the alleys. Wanted to find her friend. Instead, she weaved her way homeward, shaken yet determined.
Her father was a man made old before his time by hard graft and worry. He worried about the future. About his children. About the damp, cramped rooms they called home. Most of all he worried about Pretty, who was so like his wife in looks and temperament that he clung to her like a drowning man grasping at a piece of flotsam.
He hadn’t wanted her to take on the household tasks but, aside from the baby, her brothers were all older, with jobs that helped put food on the table. Besides, she’d insisted it was her place, and he’d never been able to refuse her.
Nor was he able to refuse when she arrived home begging to be taken to the police station. There, she sat spinning seemingly wild tales of murderous priests and women in tinted-glasses, who stole children off the streets.
They listened politely enough. Made all the usual reassurances. But Mr. McDonald could see that they had little interest in a young runaway, who was clearly alive and well cared for.
“But,” Pretty had protested, “you should have seen her. She was so terribly afraid.”
“Be that as it may, young lady,” the sergeant had said in a tone that broached no argument, “we’ve no time to be chasing girls who don’t want to be found.”
A World of Wolves: A Sherlock Holmes Mystery by MX Publishing is a book of two overlapping crime stories connected with the world of the flesh trade, in which Holmes and his associates take on the wily kingpins of the velvet underworld of Victorian England. The first happens in Cambridge, around 1868, and the second in London, around 1893. The brothers Mycroft and Sherlock Holmes investigate the first, and Holmes learns crime investigation from Mycroft. During the period when Holmes was presumed dead, following his fatal encounter with Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls in May 1891, Inspector Lestrade and Dr. Watson come close to solving the second, but get stuck at the end. Upon his return, Holmes supplies the missing pieces of the puzzle and helps Lestrade and Watson complete it.
The book pays silent tribute to the plight of poor girls, many of them minors, who have been lost to sex trafficking throughout history. Those who trap them either kill them or force them into a life of exploitation in vice dens because they are too powerful for the victims to resist successfully. As the operations of this vast, ruthless, criminal empire are all too well known, I will not go into further detail here.
The author is highly descriptive and doesn’t make any bones about presenting the cold, harsh facts that expose the reprehensible mistreatment women suffer at the hands of flesh trade actors. Outraged by these injustices, many noble souls, including those not directly related to the victims, fight back. Holmes himself provides a glowing example. At barely fourteen years of age, he engages in an all-out struggle against a murderous, strong man involved in the trade to rescue a thirteen-year-old girl from his clutches. Despite being only a boy, he proves a worthy match for the man and saves her. Holmes's bravery, compassion, and unselfish concern for the unfortunate girl deeply moved me. Although she ultimately does not survive, his kindness brings her comfort in her final moments (see pp. 80–87).
What makes this book stand out apart from the foreboding world of the sex trade that forms its backdrop is the author’s innovativeness in writing two interlinked mysteries spaced 25 years apart. Although the villain escapes justice in the first, he meets his nemesis in the second. Consequently, instead of two stories, you could also treat it as one large, 25-year-long story with four investigators. The stories are intellectually stimulating, gripping, and entertaining. The map of Cambridge that immediately follows the copyright page and the individual page footnotes, lumped together in the endnotes, by facilitating a deeper perception of the scenes, greatly enhance the pleasure of reading. This is a novel feature that I haven’t found in most Sherlock Holmes pastiches that I’ve reviewed lately. Therefore, it rightly deserves a word of praise. That said, one problem I encountered is a fair number of minor English-language errors in it. Another is the small print size of the text—I needed 40% magnification to read it comfortably.
While I would very much have liked to award it five stars, the above-mentioned flaws force me to assign it only 4.
As a highly entertaining read, I recommend this book to Holmes's fans all over the English-speaking world. Additionally, because Sherlock Holmes naturally appeals to those who love crime/detective fiction, I also recommend it to anyone interested in the genre.