Sherlockians will delight at the latest charming installment of national bestselling author Vicki Delany’s fourth Sherlock Holmes Bookshop mystery. Gemma and Jayne donate their time to raise money for the rebuilding of a burned out museum—but a killer wants a piece of the auction.Walking her dog Violet late one night, Gemma Doyle, owner of the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop, acts quickly when she … Bookshop, acts quickly when she smells smoke outside the West London Museum. Fortunately no one is inside, but it’s too late to save the museum’s priceless collection of furniture, and damage to the historic house is extensive. Baker Street’s shop owners come together to hold an afternoon auction tea to raise funds to rebuild, and Great Uncle Arthur Doyle offers a signed first edition of The Valley of Fear.
Cape Cod’s cognoscenti files into Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room, owned by Gemma’s best friend, Jayne Wilson. Excitement fills the air (along with the aromas of Jayne’s delightful scones, of course). But the auction never happens. Before the gavel can fall, museum board chair Kathy Lamb is found dead in the back room. Wrapped tightly around her neck is a long rope of decorative knotted tea cups—a gift item that Jayne sells at Mrs. Hudson’s. Gemma’s boyfriend in blue, Ryan Ashburton, arrives on the scene with Detective Louise Estrada. But the suspect list is long, and the case far from elementary. Does Kathy’s killing have any relation to a mysterious death of seven years ago?
Gemma has no intention of getting involved in the investigation, but when fellow shopkeeper Maureen finds herself the prime suspect she begs Gemma for her help. Ryan knows Gemma’s methods and he isn’t happy when she gets entangled in another mystery. But with so many suspects and so few clues, her deductive prowess will prove invaluable in A Scandal in Scarlet, Vicki Delany’s shrewdly plotted fourth Sherlock Holmes Bookshop mystery.
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A Scandal in Scarlet is the 4th book in the ‘A Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mystery’ series by Vicki Delany. I was introduced to this cozy after reading a different series written by the author (Christmas All Year Round) and am very glad I checked it out. Delany is a wonderful writer whose characters, plots, and settings are a prime example of why I love cozy mysteries.
In this book, Gemma notices a fire in a nearby museum while out walking the dog. To help pay for repairs, she and Jayne host the museum’s auction, but one of the members is killed just before it begins. Was it a rival member who didn’t like the poor woman’s success? Her husband or his previous wife and kids? The nasty shop owner Gemma knows? A burglary gone wrong? Lots of angles for the two Sherlock-wannabees to investigate all the while dating a local cop, chef, old friend, and rare book dealer. Then we must not forget running the tea room, fighting with the store owner across the street who just likes to be mean, and taking care of the cat and dog.
All-in-all, the setting is my favorite in this series. While many of the characters are good, it’s reading about many Sherlock Holmes items that keeps me coming back for more. Delany builds the best descriptions into her plot, effortlessly, so you feel transported into the story. I’m even thrilled when it’s a few pages of narrative or description without much action. It’s just that kind of a book to immerse yourself into.
The mystery was good. Not the best she’s written, but full of red herrings and a clear reason why someone was killed. The second murder threw me for a loop, but that’s just icing on the cake for solving the first one, right? :O Looking forward to the next edition!
Dollycas’s Thoughts
Gemma Doyle owns the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop on Baker Street in West London Massachusetts. While out walking her dog, Violet one evening outside of the West London Museum she smells smoke. The fire department arrives and saves most of the house but the furnishings and collectibles are destroyed. To rebuild and refurnish the Scarlet House an auction and tea is held at Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room with prizes donated by the Baker’s Street shopkeepers and other friends of the museum.
After the tea service ends the auction is set to start everything comes to a halt when museum board chair and auctioneer Kathy Lamb is found dead in the storeroom. Police arrive to an entire room of suspects including the deceased ex-husband and his new wife. One of the shopkeepers, Maureen MacGregor, is pegged as the prime suspect though because of a verbal altercation with Kathy prior to the start of the tea that was witnessed by everyone. She has asked Gemma to help prove her innocence. This doesn’t make her boyfriend, Detective Ryan Ashburton, or his partner Detective Louise Estrada happy but with the vast array of suspects, her insights could be helpful.
Gemma Doyle is a fantastic protagonist. She has a keen sense of observation, is smart and independent, and speaks her mind, sometimes to her own detriment. She may be viewed as a little harsh but by this fourth book in the series, she is softening a bit. I think we have the good detective to thank for that. He has learned she can be helpful in solving his cases because she sees and picks up on things other people don’t. Her friend Jayne is the perfect Watson to her Sherlock. Gemma sometimes forges ahead quickly while Jayne does her best to keep Gemma out of trouble. Gemma has a unique assistant in Ashleigh that frees her up and gives her plenty of time to sleuth out clue after clue.
The author has written a very complicated mystery. The deceased wasn’t well-liked and at times was as subtle as a bulldozer when it came to the changes she wanted to make at Scarlet House. Hence, the plethora of suspects. The investigation takes Gemma and Jayne from one end of Baker Street to the other and visiting not one but two yacht clubs. The current mystery may have ties to an old cold case which brings even more intrigue to the story. I was totally kept guessing until the very end and then wanted to kick myself. The K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) theory totally applied in this case and I missed the clues completely.
The Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium and the attached Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room sounds like a fabulous place to visit for Sherlock Holmes lovers. Gemma carries several book titles and all types of memorabilia related to all the versions that have evolved over the years. Someone is always taking a new twist on the famous fictional detective and his sidekick.
A Scandal in Scarlet is an excellent addition to this series. As a fan of the Basil Rathbone Holmes portrayal and a fan of Vicki Delany, I don’t know how I got so far behind on this series but I am working to rectify that now. I hope to read and review There’s A Murder Afoot and A Curious Incident soon.
I’m delighted to be making my fourth visit to the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop on Cape Cod. It promises to be as exciting and intriguing as my previous visits to the bookshop and Mrs. Hudson’ s tea room. Both businesses are owned by Gemma Doyle and her best friend, Jayne Wilson. First Gemma discovers a fire in progress at a local museum. Later, the plot thickens when a museum benefit ends abruptly due to a suspicious death. Were the fire and the death related? The game’s afoot when a local shopkeeper becomes the number one person of interest in the investigation and begs Gemma and Jayne for their assistance. Can Gemma channel her Sherlockian powers of observation and deduction to sort out the suspects? What about Gemma’s on again/off again romance with the dashingly handsome Detective Ryan Ashburton? Will the readers finally meet the perpetually traveling Uncle Arthur? Answers to these questions and an intricately plotted mystery await you on Baker Street in New London. Look for me. I’ll be browsing in Gemma’s bookshop and having tea with peach scones at Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room while following along with Gemma and Jayne’s newest adventure. Hope to see you there!
The author has written another solid mystery. The book flows well and is easy to read. The story line is logical and interesting and keeps you reading. The characters are well developed. The setting is described in such a way that readers feel as though they are actually there.T
Great book! Gemma gets involved after the chair of the museum is found murdered in the tea room. Lots of suspects and twists to keep you guessing and intrigued. Hoping there will be more books in this series with maybe Ryan and Gemma traveling to London!
A Scandal in Scarlet is book 4 in Vicki Delany’s Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mystery series. Gemma Doyle discovers the local museum on fire while walking her dog at night. Many objects were destroyed and much of historic house is damaged. Fortunately, no one was injured since the museum was empty. In an effort to restore the building, the local shop owners come together to hold an auction at Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room. Everyone donates toward the event but just prior to the start of the auction, Kathy Lamb, the chair of the museum board is found dead. The murder weapon? – a decoration sold in the Tea Room.
Gemma plans to stay far away from the investigation. She doesn’t even want to get involved to help Maureen Middleton, the shopkeeper from across the street, when she asks Gemma for help. Contrary to her plans, Gemma finds herself neck-deep in what is another murder mystery much to the annoyance of her boyfriend, Ryan Ashburton, and Detective Louise Estrada.
The character development continues in A Scandal in Scarlet. Gemma is painfully observant, and she tends to alienate herself and the people around her. She does so without malice and that’s what makes her character quirky and lovable. The supporting characters round out this great cozy mystery. Gemma’s best friend Jayne is her partner-in-crime and she has Gemma’s back. Ryan is one of the police officers assigned to the cases in all four books in the series. Their relationship history sometimes gets in the way of the investigation. The chemistry between them is strong, undeniable, and believable. I enjoy their dynamics and love romances that don’t take over the book but are there in the background. It makes the characters more realistic to me.
The plot for A Scandal in Scarlet was laid out well and the world building was as great in this book as it was in the previous three. I was able to visualize everything that was described, and I felt like I was there at the bookshop, tea room, and auction. The author did a great job masking who committed the murder and bringing in other contenders who had motive. I really enjoyed A Scandal in Scarlet and highly recommend the entire series to lovers of cozy mysteries.
A Scandal in Scarlet by Vicki Delany is a Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mystery which takes place in New London, Cape Cod, Massachusetts and features bookshop manager, Gemma Doyle. Gemma is a recent transplant from England and living and working in her Uncle Arthur’s stead while her spends his retirement sailing around the world. Her partner and best friend, Jayne Wilson, manages the adjacent teashop know as Mrs. Hudson’s Tearoom and accompanies Gemma on most facets of her investigations. Business is good in this small tourist town and Gemma has a good life. She has a perfectly lovely boyfriend; a police detective named Ryan Ashburton who loves Gemma as she is although her proclivity for being involved in murders makes him worry. In this case, Kathy Lamb, the president of the board of Scarlet House, a local living history museum has caught Gemma’s attention, partly because it took place in Mrs. Hudson’s Tearoom and partly because she loves to investigate.
This series is one of my favorites. Gemma is exceptionally bright and observant. Sadly (not for the reader), Gemma also tends to be a little snarky and sarcastic. This doesn’t always endear her to people. She is happy in her life on Cape Cod and in her small cottage and doesn’t go looking for trouble; it just seems to find her. She is an excellent and well-written character. The plot is excellent and the reader is exposed to Gemma’s powers of observation and ability to draw assumptions based on various information, which makes her an excellent detective. Her unfortunate tendency to leap before she looks makes her an entertaining one. The crimes are well-scripted and the reader is able to follow the steps to solving them. A very satisfying read. I highly recommend it.
I received a free ARC of A Scandal in Scarlet in exchange for a fair and honest review.
Gemma Doyle is walking her dog, Violet when
she smells smoke. The West London Museum
is on fire.
To help with the restoration of the Museum,
the Baker Street shop owners come together
to hold an auction to raise money.
Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room is the site where
the auction will be held. It is run by Gemma’s
best friend Jayne Wilson and next door to the
bookstore that Gemma runs called the Sherlock
Holmes Bookshop.
Gemma’s Great Uncle Arthur has donated a
signed first edition of The Valley of Fear for the
auction.
The attendees of the auction will mostly be dressed
in scarlet red.
The auction is ready to begin but the museum
board chair, Kathy Lamb has not started it.
Where is she? Gemma goes into the shop’s
back room. She discovers Kathy’s body dead.
A decorative knotted tea cup rope is wrapped
around her neck.
A complex who done it begins to be investigated.
The story is filled cover to cover with mystery,
action, humor, many twists and turns plus an
interesting array of suspicious, colorful and
intriguing well created suspects.
First rate plot which is well written leading to
a surprise conclusion.
This is book # 4 in the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop
Mysteries series. It can be read as a stand alone.
It is the first I read in the series and look forward to
reading the previous stories.
I volunteered to read Scandal in Scarlet. Thanks to
the Cozy Mystery Review Crew for the opportunity.
My opinion is my own.
This was such a fun book. It had my brain thinking like Sherlock 24/7. I love the characters and how the story evolves. The setting and all of the possible players are laid out wonderfully but Vicki still keeps you guessing right until the very end. And I love the extra tid-bit after the murder is solved and the bad guy goes away. I hope to see more in this series soon!
A Scandal in Scarlet is my first Vicki Delany book and what a doozy. Loving Sherlock Holmes, I really enjoyed a book about a bookstore based on everything Sherlock Holmes. Just bringing up Benedict Cumberbatch gave me a hankering to watch BBC’s Sherlock. Gemma lives and breathes Sherlock down to the amateur sleuthing and deducting she does. When the local museum burns, the town throws together a fundraiser to get the museum back on its feet. The fundraiser’s organizer is murdered and the list of suspects seems to be endless. Gemma’s hands are full as her deductions twist and turn the case into a complicated debacle. A second murder follows on the heels of the first and Gemma’s sleuthing seems to put her life in danger. A smoothly moving and fast paced mystery, the story drew me and kept my attention with its colorful characters and unique sherlockian hook. This book is a good read with the light-heartedness I love in my cozy mysteries that always keeps me coming back for more.
Two residents of West London are murdered within a week – one of them at Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room!!! – and despite her boyfriend Detective Ryan Ashburton’s wishes, Gemma Doyle puts on her deerstalker (figuratively, of course!) and sets out to solve the crimes. With her trusty bestie Jayne by her side, Gemma infiltrates rival yacht clubs and a historic home to get to the bottom of the case. In Vicki Delany’s fourth Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mystery her characters and their relationships continue to develop along with the series, and A Scandal in Scarlet is one of those rare books that I couldn’t put down once I started. Delightful and fast paced, it’s a perfect cozy mystery! Loved it! p.s. I did NOT guess the murderer, always a plus in my book!
I was drawn to the series out of curiosity of the series name and the covers. I am a fan of Sherlock Holmes Mysteries so naturally, I was curious about this series. I read the first book and immediately follow up with the other books in the series. I am very glad I decided to try reading this series no matter how I chose it.
Gemma Doyle is a very intelligent protagonist, she does have a Sherlockesque presoniality. All the characters including Gemma are wonderful with their strong personalities. The storyline is great and the mystery has a great pace and several well-placed red herrings to keep you guessing. I love that Gemma had to step outside her normal routine in this book and become a little more involved in the community fundraising. This was a wonderful storyline to see more of the town and more of Gemma’s powers of deduction.
I recommend this book as well as the rest of the series to mystery lovers especially fans of the cozy genre. I voluntarily read an ARC of this book from NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own and in no way have been influenced.
A Scandal in Scarlet is the most recent addition to Vicky Delany’s Sherlock Holmes Bookshop Mysteries. When the Scarlet House is partially destroyed by fire, Gemma Doyle of All Things Sherlock Bookshop and her best friend and partner in Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room, Jayne Wilson, volunteer to host a special tea and auction to raise funds for the repairs. With the West London elite in attendance and tens of thousands of dollars worth of donations to auction, the tea party is a success but the auction never occurs. As the auction is set to begin, Gemma and Jayne find Scarlet House volunteer chairperson Nancy Lamb strangled to death in the back room of the Tea Room.
The police are called and Gemma’s fellow WLPD Detective Ryan Ashburton and his partner, Detective Louise Estrada, arrive to begin the investigation, starting by questioning all who were present. When the back door is found unlocked it seems possible that those present may not be the only viable suspects, but then since the murder weapon was an ornamental rope from the Tea Room it appears the pool is once again narrowed.
When fellow shop owner Maureen moves to the top of the suspect pool having just had a very vocal altercation with Nancy before she was murdered, she pleads with Gemma to help prove her innocence. Even though Gemma has told Ryan she will stay out of it, her own curiosity and the pleading of Maureen moves her to begin a cursory investigation. But the suspects are many, and when a second body is found by Gemma and Jayne, and Gemma gives chase to the escaping assailant with the only outcome being the K9 detective’s excitement when he circled back from the chase to corner Gemma back in the house.
The hunt is stymied, the suspects too many, and the solid clues too few. That is until a chance remark by one of the Tea Room employees proves to be the key that makes the puzzle pieces fall into place in Gemma’s mind. When they do, there is a mad dash with Jayne at her side to confront the person responsible for both deaths, and when that person takes flight, Gemma and Jayne commandeer a boat to give chase, joined by the Coast Guard and the West London Police Department. And, incidentally, Gemma also is able to solve a 7 year cold case as a result of her involvement in this one.
Once again, Ms. Delany has spun a page turning tale that will keep you guessing until the end. I very much enjoyed this book and I do recommend it!
Oh, to be on Cape Cod for a beautiful summer day! Gemma Doyle and Jayne Wilson have more business at Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium and Mrs. Hudson’s Tearoom than ever, and a challenging new mystery to solve. They are each uniquely delightful; Gemma is trying hard to be less blunt and not express her deductions as they come to her.
After a late evening at work, Gemma and Violet, Great-Uncle Arthur’s cocker spaniel, are out for a walk when Violet alerts her to fire in the magnificent Scarlet House, built in 1648 and now a historical museum. After calling 911, she pounds on the door to see if anyone is inside, but the door is locked. First responders come quickly so she and Violet can go home.
The Scarlet House fire resulted from an accident rather than arson, so the board of directors plan to repair the building immediately. That will take a good amount of money, however, so the board is going to have an auction hosted by Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room. Great Uncle Arthur is donating his favorite pristine first edition copy of a Sherlock Holmes tale that is over a century old, and others donate expensive jewelry, gift packages, and more. Between the tea and scones and the start of the auction, however, the auctioneer hasn’t been seen. Gemma goes to the storeroom to see what is keeping Kathy Lamb, who is also chairperson of the museum board. Her ex-husband and his new, older, wealthy wife are present, as is the loudly obnoxious shopkeeper from Beach Fine Arts, Maureen MacGregor, who tried to donate a paint-by-number painting. When Gemma went back to the storeroom, she found Kathy on the floor, strangled, with the “weapon” still in place.
Instead of an auction, there is a police investigation. Gemma has no plans to get involved, as Ryan, the man she loves and local lead detective is more important to her than getting in the middle of another murder. Until Maureen, the obnoxious neighbor, comes pleading. Maureen is not a friend, but Gemma is sure she is innocent and chooses to simply ask a few questions here and there. As things often seem to happen, Gemma is suddenly tangled up in a case that gets more intense, with more suspects than Sherlock can wave his pipe at.
I do enjoy Gemma and Jayne; they are a fabulous, friendly duo. Jayne has mellowed the very British Gemma, helping change her from someone who bluntly spoke her mind to someone with more tact, especially when trying to creatively get information from people. Ryan still gets frustrated with her, but as the charming man who loves her, he accepts Gemma as she is. He appreciates how hard she is trying to change. All characters are well defined as befitting their roles.
This reader was stumped by the mystery! There are so many possible suspects, so many who didn’t like the way Kathy handled things at the museum, and most of the town really disliked the next person killed. There are stunning plot twists, sometimes helping bring the resolution closer…or not. Overall, I was very impressed with the resolutions and surprises! This is a wonderful fourth in the series that can be read as a standalone, but I think you might enjoy reading all of them. I highly recommend A Scandal in Scarlet, with a beautiful summer setting at the Atlantic Ocean that is a fabulous read any time of year!
From a grateful heart: I received an e-Arc of this from the publisher and NetGalley, and this is my honest review.