Holmes Away From Home (An Althea Adler Mystery) by Samantha Larsen, Samantha Hastings Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via NetGalley
Formats available: hardcover, ebook
Genres: cozy mystery, historical mystery, mystery, Sherlock Holmes
Series: Althea Adler #1
Pages: 240
Published by Severn House on October 6, 2026
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
Introducing Althea Adler, accomplished thief and daring heroine with a mysterious link to Sherlock Holmes.
A heart-racing game of wits, murder and romance is about to commence . . .
London, 1911. Althea Adler receives a mysterious postcard with just four words, 'Holmes away from home.' Surely her mother, notorious thief and opera star Irene Adler, is instructing her to break into Sherlock Holmes's safe? But when she does, Althea makes a shocking discovery . . .
Still reeling from events at 221b Baker Street, Althea accepts an invitation to a party at Twickenham Towers, the ancestral home of Lord Slough, where a murder throws her into further turmoil--as does handsome fellow guest William, the Marquess of Sheffield, who has been tasked with staking out Slough by the British Government.
Althea and William form an unlikely alliance as they set about catching a killer. But can they trust each other when they both have something to hide?
An addictive new cozy mystery trilogy featuring a super smart, lively heroine, a dashing lord and a fiendishly good whodunnit, perfect for fans of Sherlock Holmes's classic mysteries, Deanna Raybourn's Veronica Speedwell Mysteries, and Netflix's The Residence.
My Review:
Sherlock Holmes stories are my catnip. I can’t resist diving into one wherever I find it. Which is precisely what led me to pick this up. Even though the title led me to expect that I wouldn’t actually see Holmes within its pages – no matter how much I might wish to.
Which does not mean that his influence – as well as that of his older brother Mycroft – isn’t looming all over this story. Well, Mycroft certainly looms. Sherlock, on the other hand, attempts to move the chess pieces from at least a couple of moves away – and is a bit caught out when he fails to predict the movements he believes he has set in motion.
Then again, it’s not his story. It’s hers. Not the ‘her’, not ‘The Woman’ who bested him long ago. But her daughter. And possibly his.
Althea Adler is all too aware that she is the daughter – and protegee – of Irene Adler, the woman who literally got away from the ‘Great Detective’ by using his own methods and his own tricks against him, in the case of A Scandal in Bohemia.
Althea, now 22, has never known who her natural father might have been. But she is aware that her mother and Sherlock Holmes crossed paths sometime before she was born. That whatever relationship they had, or still have, is complicated. And, of course, the entire world knows about the exploits of the ‘Great Detective’ thanks to the literary endeavors of his friend and chronicler, Dr. John H. Watson.
So when it seems as if her mother has set her yet another test via a puzzling postcard with only the words “Holmes away from home” written on it, Althea Adler, with long experience of such puzzles, inveigles herself in Holmes’ rooms in search of further clues to either her mother’s whereabouts OR whatever treasure or information her mother expects her to steal from Sherlock Holmes.
Instead, she finds a picture of her mother, carefully preserved in Holmes’ hidden safe, from more than twenty years earlier. Before Althea herself was born. Whether or not this was the clue her mother intended her to find, Althea realizes that it IS a clue. A clue to her own origins. A possibility she never even imagined.
One that might offer her a way out from under her mother’s dubious care and criminal entanglements, and allow her the chance to make her own future. If she can seize it. One way or another.
Escape Rating B: You’d think the mystery in this would be Althea’s search for her origins. Not that that isn’t part of the mystery, but it’s not the main mystery in this story. It’s probably a good idea that it’s not, because there’s a lot of interesting potential in making Althea work for that bit of information.
Instead, the mystery in this story is the one that Althea stumbles upon in her attempt to research her own origins in Dr. Watson’s diaries for the year 1888, the year that included the events of A Scandal in Bohemia as well as her own birth. Not that she actually manages to do so.
That search needs to go through her own school frenemy, Rosie Watson, an invitation to a country house party, a meeting with one of Mycroft’s secret operatives, and a murder. Not that the victim didn’t have it coming. (The murder reminds me a bit of The Murder at World’s End in that it couldn’t have happened to a more deserving fellow.)
But the biggest part of the story – and the mystery – is basically a pre-World War I country house party among the supposedly rich and privileged class. Althea – along with Mycroft’s intelligent and intriguing aristocratic operative William, the recently elevated Lord Sheffield – make a temporary alliance of opportunity and attraction to investigate the murder as the police detective is not remotely capable of the job and no one can leave the house until the murderer is caught.
Their investigations don’t remotely align. William is investigating political terrorism on the part of members of the House of Lords who want to retain their “traditional rights” in the face of a world that is leaving them behind. Those lords seem to be under the impression that their traditional privileges include the right to bomb the residences of government officials who oppose them – something that Mycroft is duty bound to stop. Althea is rightfully worried that her checkered past will put her in the police crosshairs AND she needs to return to London to rifle through Dr. Watson’s journals.
The house party with all of its personal, romantic and familial tensions – along with the murder investigation – is interesting BUT it has been done before. This part certainly had its fascinating – and convoluted – points, but it wasn’t quite what I was hoping for. Still, it showcased Althea’s intelligence and ability to get what she wants and developed the relationship between William and herself that is going to be the thing to watch in future volumes. (It’s clear that eventually they WILL, but they don’t trust each other nearly enough – YET.)
Howsomever, I picked this book up for the Sherlock Holmes angle, and I got a bit teased this time around. I say this time around because there have been several series that reach back to A Scandal in Bohemia and posit the possibility of a child resulting from that affair. So far, at least, the Althea Adler series takes an entirely different tack from Leonard Goldberg’s Daughter of Sherlock Holmes series, in that Althea doesn’t know and needs to find out, where in Goldberg’s series Joanna not only does know but has more than a few habits and predilections that descend directly from her famous father – even though she never actually met the man. That series also carries several of Sherlock Holmes’ friends and enemies into a next generation alongside her, notably Dr. Watson’s son, Dr. Watson the Younger, as well as Inspector Lestrade’s son following in his father’s footsteps. Unfortunately for Joanna, but fortunately for the reader, the son of one of her father’s great enemies, Sebastian Moran, has also followed his father’s path.
Then there’s Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes series, where Holmes has always known that Irene Adler had his child, in this case a son, Damien Adler. Damien and HIS family have become part of Russell’s and Holmes’ life after a case (of course because of a case) and it’s fascinating seeing that version of Holmes as a grandfather.
But I was expecting a bit more Holmes in this story. I did get more of Mycroft. Then again, there simply IS more of Mycroft. I’m intrigued enough to continue and see how this goes, but I wish I’d gotten a few more hints. OTOH, I’m sure Althea does too!
In the end, neither the reader NOR Althea learn whether or not Sherlock Holmes is her biological father. However, based on Sherlock Holmes’ own actions at that end, or at least the report of them that the reader receives through Mycroft Holmes, one Holmes brother or the other certainly intends for us to bet that way. Whether it’s the truth or yet more manipulation is something we’ll all get to discover later books in the series. I’m definitely curious enough to want to find out!
~~~~~~ TOURWIDE GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~
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