Have you met Mrs. Sherlock Holmes

via Amazon

Mrs. Sherlock Holmes, you say? As in the wife of?
Oh, no! As in the female American counterpart….
No, I have never heard of such.
Well, you are not alone. Let me give you a little introduction…

There was a lady in black that quietly but diligently made her presence a powerful force to reckon with in the streets and prisons and courtrooms of New York, not to mention the Halls of Power in D.C. She was a lady of some substance, whom preferred to be a judicial voice of the people. Those desperate, down-trodden, deprived masses whom mostly struggled to reach the base of Lady Liberty full of hope and dreams, thus finding the reality of the American Dream more elusive within her lands than had seemed from distant shores.

If you are interested in the gritty reality of NYC in the early part of the 20th Century, this might just meet your needs. Ricca’s research and writing combine to provide a compelling insight into the colliding worlds and cultures of turn of the century America. His writing style is encompassing narration of such a wholeness in presentation that when he reaches the end of the research queries you are left feeling somewhat let down. Thus, including the reader in the same dismay that must have burdened the lives of those souls in need of true justice from a system already bogged down with bias and corruption.

I must confess that while I personally, had no idea of the stories presented in the pages of Mrs. Sherlock Holmes, and being drawn into the lives of bygone injustices, I am not sure how I feel about the main character in the end. The story takes the reader on trips not just across time, but also from the belly of the city beast to the muddy bottoms of the southern swamp lands to the isolated confines of Missouri cotton plantations. The fingers of crime and injustice don’t just stop there, you are exposed to their reach to and from the Old World extending even to exotic locales of South America.

One detail that I did find soothing to that injury, was his inclusion of ‘end notes’ for most of the persons of interest presented in the body. So while, you are left asking yourself….wait, where’s the rest, is that all, but what about and so what happened then…..you at least know how the who(s) bowed out.