‘The Last Telegram of Mrs Hudson’ by Mattea Orr

Published by Head of Zeus,
3 September 2026.
ISBN: 978-1-03592651-0 (PB)

Not a great deal is known about Sherlock Holmes's childhood, but Mattea Orr is setting out to change that. In her version of those formative years, his mother takes centre stage, but seven-year-old Sherlock certainly makes his presence felt, and plays a part in solving the mystery of the disappearing village boy and the body in the garden. So does Mrs Hudson, known to Conan Doyle aficionados as the housekeeper to the grown-up Holmes and his amanuensis Watson, but here is a young widow who exchanges a career as a telegraphist for a job as a lady's maid. 

But to begin at the beginning of this quirkily written piece of
pseudo-history: a grieving Katy Hudson has returned home from London after the untimely death of her beloved husband. She finds her mother and five siblings in need of a breadwinner, and in the absence of a position as a telegraphist, her London job, she becomes Lady Holmes's personal maid. But as Lady Holmes is no ordinary employer. She very soon declares that what she really needs is not a maid but an investigative partner, and reveals talents more suited to an undercover agent than a member of the nobility. What's more, it quickly becomes evident that the pair are going to become closer still. 

The first mystery to be solved is Eddie Beale's rash, and the destruction of a row of marrow plants. The Beales are tenants of Lady Holmes, who is unconventional to the point of eccentricity: abrasiveness and lack of patience is only part of it. So she sends Hudson in to do the questioning. Success achieved, they turn their attention to Billy Mudd, whose disappearance is driving his mother frantic – and that's when the fun really starts. 

Of the characters in this multi-layered mystery, only Lady Holmes and Katy Hudson veer away from stereotype: her ladyship is starchy, formal and unmaternal, though a softer side reveals itself and Katy has trouble reining in her tongue but knows how to relate to the village folk. The supporting cast wouldn't be out of place in a Victorian melodrama: Billy's mum Frances is hysterical; Katy's brothers are full of mischief; the maids at the Holmes residence are all-seeing, Goodwin the policeman is controlling, bombastic and in the thrall of the local gentry, who are haughtily convinced of their own superiority– all quite deliberately in the part of the author, I'm sure. And it all takes place against a background of detail and contrast: mainly the tiny cottage which houses Katy's large family and the vast Holmes mansion where her ladyship and Sherlock rattle around with a handful of servants. 

Sherlock lurks mostly in the shadows, but even at his tender age shows talents and flashes of brilliance which hint at what is to come. Who knows what may develop as the series progresses? It will be interesting to find out.---------
Reviewer: Lynne Patrick 

Mattea Orr is a recovering academic and current mystery writer, author of The Last Telegram of Mrs. Hudson (Bloomsbury/Head of Zeus) and the forthcoming sequel A Most Remarkable Forgery  will be published in Spring 2027. Her short stories have appeared in the anthologies Transcendent from Transmundane Press and the Agents of the Abyss from Padwolf Publishing, Toil & Trouble Literary Magazine, and Witch House Magazine. She lives in upstate New York with her partner, their three kids, and any number of disreputable cats, where she writes full time. 

Lynne Patrick has been a writer ever since she could pick up a pen, and has enjoyed success with short stories, reviews and feature journalism, but never, alas, with a novel. She crossed to the dark side to become a publisher for a few years and is proud to have launched several careers which are now burgeoning. She lives in Oxfordshire in a house groaning with books, about half of them crime fiction.