A Study in Lavender

Speaking of ebooks, I recently bought A Study in Lavender as an ebook. This is the same book that Tor.com reviewed last year. There is no sexually explicit content in the book, but it explores themes of queer clients, queer victims, or queer canon characters.


I mostly liked "The Case of the Wounded Heart", "The Adventure of the Unidentified Flying Object", and "The Adventure of the Poesy Ring." The first one featured Lestrade coping with angst and longing for Holmes. The UFO case had a good mystery, which I could really see Holmes of the canon solving. The "Poesy Ring" had a good mystery too, and found justice for the client without getting too unrealistic. Other tales were written well enough, but to me, were spoiled by bad endings, or in the case of "Well-Educated Young Man", unnecessary ramblings about how to be a good writer. "The Bride and the Bachelors" followed the "Noble Bachelor" plot way too closely for my taste. I don't mind it being inspired by the canon case, but please change more of the details, so that we don't use the same wet wedding clothes and hotel receipt to solve the case!

I disagree with the Tor reviewer that "The Adventure of the Hidden Lane" describes an "asexual Holmes." It describes a celibate Holmes who insists that he can't risk romantic distraction. To me, that suggests that he's consciously repressing any sexual attraction that he does feel. He reminded me a little of Holmes in Rohase Piercy's book, who initially argued that he couldn't give Watson the kind of love he wanted. Overall, I hope there will be more books like this published, and that Sherlockians will stop forever referencing Larry Townsend's Sexual Adventures of Sherlock Holmes as an example of slash.