It’s a growing trend to write fiction about the women behind famous men, and a brilliant idea to extend this to write about the women behind fictional characters too; in this case the women connected to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson.  The House at Baker Street by Michelle Birkby puts together the scraps of information we learn about these ‘background’ women in the Arthur Conan Doyle stories and gives them a detective adventure of their own.

Both Martha Hudson and Mary Watson are believable characters and the plot is a good one, though not perhaps quite of the standard of an original Conan Doyle.  The book doesn’t have the same period feel as the Conan Doyle stories either, but then why should it?  It was written a hundred years later and doesn’t make any pretentions to be the same as the originals.

As far as I can tell, without extensive knowledge of the Sherlock Holmes books, it fits in well and I didn’t come across any annoying anomalies.  In short, it could have happened!  I enjoyed it very much and I particularly liked the way the scene is now set for further adventures by the same pair of intrepid female detectives.

The House at Baker Street by Michelle Birkby is published by Pan Macmillan and will be available in paperback from 25 February 2016