Davies’ long-running series delightfully inverts Arthur Conan Doyle’s focus as Sherlock Holmes plays supporting character to a successful investigation by his observant landlady, Mrs. Hudson, that largely passes beneath his notice. Taking the Watson role of sidekick and narrator is scrappy teenage maid Flotsam, whose voice combines period formality, youthful snark, and as much insight into her mentor as the faithful doctor had into Holmes. The victim in Mrs. Hudson’s eighth case is arms dealer Charles Belladonna, whose death is originally ruled accidental. The plot is thickened by the inheritance of the title. The beneficiary is son Paul, left on the industrialist’s doorstep as an infant more than 20 years ago, current location unknown. Holmes and Watson are far from insignificant characters. Their highbrow conjectures on the case play drolly against Mrs. Hudson’s more conversationally delivered deductions. Holmesians will take pleasure in the many references to characters and places from the original stories as Davies expands rather than contradicts Doyle’s world. Although the labyrinthine course of the plot can be confusing, the tale is kept afloat by the delicious character portraits of numerous people of interest, whose juicy names—Mrs. Beer, Old Rudge, Mr. Rumbelow—often sound more like Dickens than Doyle. A handful of characters are based on real people whose histories are unpacked in a concluding historical note.