Claire O’Dell: A Study in Honor
Oct. 10th, 2018 06:22 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
In a near-future America wracked by civil war, wounded army doctor Janet Watson, a surgeon who no longer has two flesh and blood arms with which to operate, heads to Washington. In addition to the physical trauma of her injury and the retrofitted prosthesis that doesn’t quite work right, she is dealing with the knowledge that her final military action was a shameful one, its veterans viewed with disgrace. Battered by war, without a promise of work or the skills she was trained in, alone in a city that distrusts veterans and dies not seem too fond of black people who appear homeless or out of work, Watson’s immediate future seems bleak. Then, a chance encounter with another veteran she once treated leads to an opportunity to share an astonishingly inexpensive apartment with the unnerving and enigmatic Sara Holmes, a brilliant, aristocratic, apparently wealthy, black woman who diagnoses Watson’s trauma and insecurities on the spot, and then challenges her to share the apartment.
This is the opening to Claire ODell’s Holmesian science fiction novel A Study in Honor.
Watson’s life with Holmes is indeed a challenge for her. Holmes gives peremptory instructions, never consults Watson, has strange visitors, and generally behaves in an enigmatic and annoying fashion. She takes Watson out to dinner on occasion, gives her expensive gifts, at times almost appears to be courting her in a peculiar fashion. Watson is by turns curious, angry, resentful, and bewildered. She finally wrests a minimum of information from Holmes, who acknowledges that she is government agent, but can say no more fir security reasons.
Meanwhile, Watson struggles with PTSD and her job as a med tech at the VA, where her medical skills are barely utilised - she essentially does initial intake interviews with each patient and records the information in the VA files. She’s frustrated by the inadequate care the veterans receive, and by her inability to be a doctor, to order tests and make the attempt to find out whether there is anything to be done for the people she sees again and again.
Everything changes when Belinda Diaz, a patient that Watson has seen repeatedly, been deeply concerned about, and risked her job to order diagnostic tests for, dies suddenly. Watson digs into the records to see if the death was preventable, but fails to find any indication of the tests she herself ordered. On her way home that night, she’s attacked, almost killed, but Holmes appears unexpectedly, saving her life.
If there was any doubt that the two events were connected, that vanishes when Holmes discovers that three other veterans from Diaz’ unit died the same week. Holmes, with Watson in tow, makes a flying weekend trip to Miami and Michigan, where the other deaths occurred. When they return, Watson reports for work, to learn she has been ‘fired with cause’ - which they are not required to explain.
As they investigate, Holmes and Watson are drawn deeper into a conspiracy that reaches into dangerous places in government, industry and the military. It’s a complex plot, and, like some of the investigations the original Sherlock undertakes for Mycroft, ends up being too politically sensitive for the truth that Holmes and Watson uncover here to be revealed. But through it all, a solid partnership is forged between Holmes and Watson - who ends up getting a real job as a respected surgical specialist, and a brand new prosthesis that will allow her to work with confidence, as a thank you from an intelligence agency that cannot acknowledge what she’s done in any other way.
And yes, the door is open for more of Sara Holmes and Doctor Janet Watson, and I dearly hope that O’Dell is inclined to write it, because these are wonderfully developed characters, clearly inspired by Conan Doyle’s heroes, and yet equally clearly their own fully realised selves. And who doesn’t need a black, female, Holmes and Watson duo in their lives?
This is the opening to Claire ODell’s Holmesian science fiction novel A Study in Honor.
Watson’s life with Holmes is indeed a challenge for her. Holmes gives peremptory instructions, never consults Watson, has strange visitors, and generally behaves in an enigmatic and annoying fashion. She takes Watson out to dinner on occasion, gives her expensive gifts, at times almost appears to be courting her in a peculiar fashion. Watson is by turns curious, angry, resentful, and bewildered. She finally wrests a minimum of information from Holmes, who acknowledges that she is government agent, but can say no more fir security reasons.
Meanwhile, Watson struggles with PTSD and her job as a med tech at the VA, where her medical skills are barely utilised - she essentially does initial intake interviews with each patient and records the information in the VA files. She’s frustrated by the inadequate care the veterans receive, and by her inability to be a doctor, to order tests and make the attempt to find out whether there is anything to be done for the people she sees again and again.
Everything changes when Belinda Diaz, a patient that Watson has seen repeatedly, been deeply concerned about, and risked her job to order diagnostic tests for, dies suddenly. Watson digs into the records to see if the death was preventable, but fails to find any indication of the tests she herself ordered. On her way home that night, she’s attacked, almost killed, but Holmes appears unexpectedly, saving her life.
If there was any doubt that the two events were connected, that vanishes when Holmes discovers that three other veterans from Diaz’ unit died the same week. Holmes, with Watson in tow, makes a flying weekend trip to Miami and Michigan, where the other deaths occurred. When they return, Watson reports for work, to learn she has been ‘fired with cause’ - which they are not required to explain.
As they investigate, Holmes and Watson are drawn deeper into a conspiracy that reaches into dangerous places in government, industry and the military. It’s a complex plot, and, like some of the investigations the original Sherlock undertakes for Mycroft, ends up being too politically sensitive for the truth that Holmes and Watson uncover here to be revealed. But through it all, a solid partnership is forged between Holmes and Watson - who ends up getting a real job as a respected surgical specialist, and a brand new prosthesis that will allow her to work with confidence, as a thank you from an intelligence agency that cannot acknowledge what she’s done in any other way.
And yes, the door is open for more of Sara Holmes and Doctor Janet Watson, and I dearly hope that O’Dell is inclined to write it, because these are wonderfully developed characters, clearly inspired by Conan Doyle’s heroes, and yet equally clearly their own fully realised selves. And who doesn’t need a black, female, Holmes and Watson duo in their lives?
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Date: 2018-10-10 10:38 pm (UTC)