THE CASE OF THE SOMERVILLE SECRET

Baker Street Irregular Andrew Tillett and his housekeeper's daughter Sara are still fast friends, with each other and with toff policeman Peter Wyatt (now an inspector), and still adept at landing smack in the middle of the most interesting crime cases in Holmesian London. This one involves a murdered caretaker, a blackmailing husband, a titled Assyriologist (Lord Somerville), and, as the plot unravels, a genetic monstrosity raised as Somerville's son but now revealed as the child of his housekeeper, switched at birth 17 years earlier when the Lord's wife and (he now learns) his own baby died. The ending might strain your tolerance for Victorian plots and predilections; but Newman's nimble sleuthing, with the children's active participation an essential element, makes for elegant entertainment.