A Monstrous Regiment of Women (mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes, #2)

Set in post-World War I England, this novel follows Mary Russell, a nearly 21-year-old Oxford student of theology and chemistry. Russell is the protégée and investigative partner of the retired detective Sherlock Holmes, who lives in a cottage on the Sussex Downs near Russell's family home.

On the day after Christmas, 1920, Russell finishes a scholarly paper and walks to Holmes's cottage, only to find him away. She tracks him to London's East End, where he is driving a hansom cab in disguise. Atop the cab, Holmes provocatively suggests she has come to propose marriage. The argument escalates until Russell flips off the back of the cab and vanishes into the streets.

Wandering London's poorest neighborhoods all night, Russell encounters Lady Veronica Beaconsfield, an old Oxford friend devoted to charitable work among the poor. Veronica confides her anguish over her fiancé, Miles Fitzwarren, who has developed shell shock and heroin addiction following his wartime service, and invites Russell to attend an evening service led by Margery Childe at the New Temple in God, a feminist religious organization.

Margery is a small, magnetic blonde woman of nearly 40 who preaches about women's equality through Scripture with extraordinary charisma. Russell is fascinated but wary of Margery's hold over her wealthy followers, who call themselves the Inner Circle. After the service, Russell meets Margery privately and shares her expertise in biblical scholarship, revealing that Hebrew texts contain hidden feminine imagery for God. Electrified, Margery asks Russell to become her tutor, and Russell agrees.

Outside the Temple, Holmes materializes from a dark doorway, having tracked Russell across London. He takes Russell to a hidden bolt-hole, where they discuss Margery over a makeshift meal. Holmes warns that religion and money form a dangerous combination. Russell asks him to help with Miles's addiction, and when he refuses, she makes a cutting remark alluding to Holmes's son, a painful subject from earlier in their partnership. Wounded, Holmes agrees to look into the case. That night, a new physical awareness of Holmes unsettles Russell, and she flees before dawn.

Veronica brings devastating news: Iris Fitzwarren, Miles's sister and a Temple member, has been murdered. Russell retreats to Oxford, then returns to London and visits the Fitzwarren household with Veronica. Holmes arrives and confronts Miles directly, offering to help him overcome his physical dependency. After a tense silence, Miles accepts, and Holmes rushes him to a sanatorium.

On January 2, 1921, Russell turns 21 and inherits her parents' substantial fortune. She begins regular tutorials with Margery while attending the Temple's weekly services. The Thursday services, devoted to love, reveal Margery's genuine mystical nature.

The following Thursday, Russell arrives early, picks the lock of a chapel door, and finds Margery kneeling before the altar with her face badly beaten and her ribs cracked. Margery refuses help, yet minutes before the service she emerges looking completely uninjured and preaches normally. Russell writes Holmes describing what she can only call an apparent miracle. In a subsequent tutorial, Margery accuses Russell of intellectual coldness toward God and love. Shaken, Russell retreats to Oxford.

A messenger from Holmes awakens Russell at three in the morning with alarming news: Veronica was pushed in front of an Underground train and is hospitalized under the armed guard of Dr. Watson, Holmes's old partner. Russell rushes to London, where Holmes passes her an intelligence file assembled by his brother Mycroft Holmes, a senior government official. The file reveals that three women connected to the Temple have died and left significant money to it: Delia Laird drowned in August, Lilian McCarthy died in an unwitnessed road accident in October, and Iris was murdered in December.

Russell approaches Inspector Lestrade at Scotland Yard and lays out her theory: Someone close to Margery is murdering wealthy Temple members for their bequests. She arranges police protection for Veronica and sends Miles to take Veronica to a remote Scottish lodge for safety. Russell then volunteers to fill Veronica's role at the Temple, observing its inner workings while teaching literacy classes and participating in demonstrations. One foggy evening, a knife-wielding attacker ambushes Russell and Margery. Russell fights him off but sustains a slash to her arm; as the man wrenches away, his elbow dislocates. That night, the attacker is murdered in his hospital bed.

Russell boards a train for Oxford but is intercepted by a man with a gun who forces her to drink a drugged beverage. She wakes in a pitch-black stone cellar. Over nine days, her captor and three thugs inject her with heroin. Russell fights them each time but is overpowered. Because her nervous system was sensitized by heroin administered after a childhood car accident that killed her family, she develops dependency far faster than expected. In her lucid intervals, she reaches clarity about her feelings: She loves Holmes.

On February 1, Holmes finds Russell in the cellar of a country house in Essex. She is emaciated and experiencing withdrawal symptoms. Holmes administers a half-dose of heroin to steady her enough to give a calm statement, then proves she was injected against her will by demonstrating that she is left-handed and could not have injected her own left arm. Afterward, Russell drives the needle into a table and snaps it.

During her recovery, Holmes reveals that a forged will in Russell's name was filed at Somerset House, England's civil registry for wills and estates, leaving her fortune to the Temple. He identifies her captor as Claude Franklin, a sophisticated criminal linked to drug smuggling. Russell admits her terror, and they agree to face Franklin together.

Holmes disguises himself as a street vendor outside the Temple while Russell infiltrates the Temple's women's shelter. That night, she cracks the combination safe in Margery's study. Inside, she finds Margery's 1915 marriage certificate to a Major Silverton, killed in 1916, and a second certificate dated December 1920 to Claude de Finetti, who is in fact Claude Franklin. She also finds mutual wills and love letters.

On Sunday morning, Margery quarrels with her maid Marie and walks toward the river. Holmes's network tracks her to a warehouse near Greenwich, where Russell and Holmes overhear Margery confronting Franklin. Franklin confesses to murdering Delia, Lilian, and Iris for their bequests and reveals he married Margery to inherit the Temple's fortune. He shoots Margery below the shoulder. Holmes and Russell burst through the door, but Franklin escapes to a launch on the river. Holmes knocks Russell unconscious and pursues Franklin alone. The launch collides with a barge and explodes.

Holmes surfaces alive. Russell hauls him onto the pier, kisses him, then slaps him for knocking her out and demands he never do it again. Holmes acknowledges his feelings, and Russell accepts his proposal on the condition that he never try to protect her by excluding her. They shake hands to seal the engagement.

In a postscript, Russell recounts the aftermath. Margery returns all inherited money to the victims' families, gives the Temple to her followers, and departs for West Africa, where she does charitable work until she dies of cholera in 1935. In a final visit before Margery sails, Russell asks once more about the healing, and Margery confirms it happened. Miles marries Veronica, but he is killed in Ireland in 1924, leaving her with one child. Russell and Holmes marry.