The Hound of Justice

Starred review from May 13, 2019
In the pseudonymous O’Dell’s debut, A Study in Honor, which reimagined Holmes and Watson as gay African-American women living in a near-future U.S. riven by a second civil war sparked by right-wing racists, surgeon Janet Watson lost an arm. In this superb sequel, Watson, now employed by Georgetown University Hospital, is working hard to master a prosthetic replacement so that she can operate again. The inauguration of the new president, who campaigned on a promise to negotiate a peace treaty with the secessionists, is disrupted by a terror attack by the Brotherhood of Redemption. Watson is on hand to treat the wounded, and her enigmatic roommate, FBI agent Sara Holmes, is tasked with investigating how the Brotherhood managed to evade stringent security procedures and smuggle explosives into Washington, D.C. Eventually, Watson assumes an active role in Holmes’s inquiry, which requires a perilous crossing into enemy terrain. O’Dell movingly portrays a proud woman struggling to regain her professional skills in a country still plagued by racism. Readers will hope this inventive series has a long run. Agent: Lane Heymont, Tobias Literary.

June 15, 2019
In this second installment of the Janet Watson Chronicles, Dr. Watson and Sara Holmes infiltrate a secret facility inside the New Confederacy to foil a diabolical assassination plot. Set in a futuristic America divided by a New Civil War, O'Dell's (A Study in Honor, 2018) speculative take on the Sherlock Holmes mythology picks up where the first novel left off. Dr. Janet Watson, having lost an arm in the fight against Nadine Adler, is adapting to her prosthetic and itching to be cleared to perform surgery again. Her friend and Washington, D.C., roommate, Sara Holmes, is on indefinite leave from whatever "alphabet agency" she works for and is generally going stir-crazy. On Inauguration Day, the Brotherhood of Redemption, an extremist faction of the New Confederacy, sets off a number of explosions. Sara and Janet fear this is only the tip of a much more destructive terrorist plot. Additionally, there are a number of mysterious deaths at the hospital. While Janet tries to get her life back on track--rounds, practice surgeries, and a few dates with an attractive bookstore owner--Sara is laying the groundwork for a long game. When she disappears, Janet must travel south and then cross the border into the New Confederacy to find a hardcore group of resistance fighters and help them rescue a kidnapped biochemist. O'Dell's imagined America is a grim place, both mired in the racial violence and prejudice of the past and splintered apart by the destructive politics of Trump and those who, speculatively, have succeeded him. The links to Sherlock Holmes provide a deeper skeleton framework to the story, but one wonders how necessary it will be in future novels. Janet and Sara are complex African American women who have no need to be tied to white, male, British detectives of the past. When these all-female, mostly black resistance fighters weapon up, they kick some serious bad-guy (and -girl) ass. Read it for the action scenes and savor some sweet friendship moments in between.

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