A Study in Honor

A Novel

By: Claire O'Dell

Narrated by: Lisa Renee Pitts

A selection in Parade’s roundup of “25 Hottest Books of Summer 2018”

A Paste Magazine’s Most Anticipated 25 books of 2018 pick

A Medium’s Books pick for We Can’t Wait to Read in 2018 list

Set in a near future Washington, D.C., a clever, incisive, and fresh feminist twist on a classic literary icon - Sherlock Holmes - in which Dr. Janet Watson and covert agent Sara Holmes will use espionage, advanced technology, and the power of deduction to unmask a murderer targeting Civil War veterans.

Dr. Janet Watson knows firsthand the horrifying cost of a divided nation. While treating broken soldiers on the battlefields of the New Civil War, a sniper’s bullet shattered her arm and ended her career. Honorably discharged and struggling with the semi-functional mechanical arm that replaced the limb she lost, she returns to the nation’s capital, a bleak, edgy city in the throes of a fraught presidential election. Homeless and jobless, Watson is uncertain of the future when she meets another black and queer woman, Sara Holmes, a mysterious yet playfully challenging covert agent who offers the doctor a place to stay.

Watson’s readjustment to civilian life is complicated by the infuriating antics of her strange new roommate. But the tensions between them dissolve when Watson discovers that soldiers from the New Civil War have begun dying one by one - and that the deaths may be the tip of something far more dangerous, involving the pharmaceutical industry and even the looming election. Joining forces, Watson and Holmes embark on a thrilling investigation to solve the mystery - and secure justice for these fallen soldiers.

©2018 Claire O'Dell (P)2018 HarperCollins Publishers

Engaging from beginning to end

I loved this novel. There was tremendous amounts of compassion, anger, and truth pouring from these pages. The narration was very well done.

What Alphabet Do You Work For?

I was a bit confused about the year this took place? Though the names were Holmes and Watson, they were not to ones of Old. Women doing it for themselves. Awesomely Awesome. Off to my next Adventure.

We Have A Winner!!

Holmes is an African American female.
Watson is a disabled veteran African American female.
They are lesbians
WE HAVE A WINNER!!!
O'Dell has spun a tale of two of literature's most prized characters in new bodies set in the near future of America where war is reality. This yarn weaves the cold and brutal intellect of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock but set against a backdrop of the new socio-economic depression and the type of political atmosphere that anyone who has picked up a newspaper or watched even one nightly news cast, fears is coming. The author tells real truths of war, the military, what some soldiers who come back from service really deal with and how the ideology of right and fair are worth fighting for. This book is the best of all that I love about Holmes and Watson.

This is a weird fantasy of Black female pain.

Three quarters of this book is little more than the white female author's tourist fantasy of how painful and suffering and poor upon, she imagines, it must be to be a Black woman. Don't listen to this if your intention is to listen to a re-imagined Sherlock Holmes narrative. That's not what this is. This is a fantasy about somebody's pain and how misunderstood they are.

Honest Review from a Black Man

This is going, to be honest, so if you don't like that please don't read. There are problems when white writers do Black characters, and one of those problems is a misunderstanding of the things Black people take issue with when it comes to racism. While a world after Trump is an interesting idea for a story, especially with the 2nd Civil War as presented as the backdrop of this book, my biggest problem was with Dr. Watson. Microaggressions are a pain in the butt, this is true. They also inform the kind of person one is dealing with but they don't stop us cold from living life. In too many places in this story, Dr. Watson experiences what I saw as micro-aggressions and is paralyzed by them. That's not such a shock since the story stops throughout the book because Dr. Watson is paralyzed by everything. I get that the main character has to have flaws and be put their paces but JEEZ, it got soooooo annoying making the read more a slog because I kept rolling my eyes.

And speaking of rolling my eyes, does the author know how the Sherlock Holmes trope works? I'm going to forgive the face a character has a robot arm and it's the lamest robot arm in fiction, but here we got the lamest Sherlock analog on Earth. Instead of a lone warrior armed with the art of deduction, we have a character with an internet implant who uses that to learn things. I mean in any version of Sherlock Holmes the character takes one look and can know what you had for lunch, the last time you had sex and why you're the killer. In this version, the Sherlock analog doesn't do that - the thing that defines Sherlock Holmes.) She just annoying. I mean Sheldon from Big Bang Theory annoying and all her information either comes from her "bosses" or from her internet implant. That's not Sherlock Holmes works. For example, in the show Sherlock, he uses a smartphone but not to deduce anything about anyone. There is nothing wrong with having an LGBT woman of color Sherlock (or Sara) Holmes, but she HAS to be Sherlock Holmes, not a not-so-super-spy who uses an implant to get all her information.

These are the reasons I was extremely disappointed with this book.

Premise good, but execution...

Boring mystery, little interesting in Holmes-Watson dynamic (why even invoke?), stilted narration, near future politics and tech hold no surprises.