Irregular Detective Mysteries

The Irregular Detective Mysteries follow Timothy Badger, a former Baker Street Irregular, and Benjamin Watson, his scientifically minded partner, as they try to establish a private enquiry agency in London in 1895. Sherlock Holmes is their fictional mentor rather than their protagonist: the cases belong to two younger detectives who must turn Holmes’s methods into a livelihood while navigating class, race, money and the practical dangers of Victorian street life.

Each mystery takes a fashionable late-Victorian enthusiasm and gives it a criminal edge. A séance becomes a murder scene, an Egyptomania mummy-unwrapping party reveals a modern corpse, and the kidnapping of Dr John Watson turns a familiar Holmesian world inside out. Westerson uses the series to explore spiritualism, medical authority, private investigation, journalism and the appetite for spectacle in fin-de-siècle London while retaining the pace and wit of a detective pastiche.