My City! London! It’s great to be home.

The Victoria & Albert! Harrods! Tate Britain! The National Portrait Gallery! St Paul’s! A proper cup of tea! I don’t know what I’m most exciting about seeing. After the cup of tea of course. Not that I’m likely to get much time for touristing, as I’m only here for a few days and attending a convention at that. But maybe there will be some time for showing my friends one or two of my favorite places in the greatest city in the world.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m loving my new life in West London, Massachusetts and owning and running the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium (most of the time, anyway) but there’s no place like home, is there?

I wasn’t planning on going to this conference, Sherlock Holmes in the Modern World, but my Great Uncle Arthur Doyle is receiving an award, and (curmudgeon that he is) he doesn’t want to go, so somehow I got talked into accepting it on his behalf.

It’s in January, around Sherlock Holmes Birthday (that’s not really a thing, but Sherlockians like to celebrate his birthday on January 6), which is the only time I can go, when Cape Cod isn’t flooded with tourists (bless their little money-spending hearts). The rest of the year, it’s hard enough finding time to take an afternoon off, never mind go on vacation. My best friend Jayne Wilson, runs Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room, next door at 220 Baker Street, and she gets even less of a break than I do. I’m leaving the shop in the (dare I hope) capable hands of my Uncle Arthur and my assistant Ashleigh. What’s a vacation without friends, so I managed to talk Jayne and Ryan Ashburton into coming with me. Sherlockian-extraordinaire Donald Morris and rare book dealer Grant Thompson were happy to tag along.

As well as conference things and a few art galleries or museums, I plan to spend time visiting my parents Henry and Anne Doyle and maybe even see my older sister Pippa. I’m not entirely sure what Pippa does for a living. She says she’s a ‘minor functionary’ in the British government. I suspect she’s a lot more than that, but I’m not going to ask.

Anyway, we’re off for a few days of fun in the world’s greatest city. I can only hope nothing will happen to spoil our vacation.

There’s a Murder Afoot is the fifth book in the “Sherlock Holmes Bookshop” cozy mystery series, released January 7, 2020.

Gemma Doyle and her friends travel to London for a Sherlock Holmes convention–but will Gemma’s father take the fall for a felonious forger’s fatality?

The 6th of January is Sherlock Holmes’s birthday, and lucky for Gemma Doyle, January is also the slowest time of the year at both the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium, and Mrs. Hudson’s Tea Room. It’s a good time for Gemma and her friends to travel to England for a Holmes Convention. For Gemma, the trip provides an opportunity to visit her parents, Jayne Wilson is excited about seeing all the sites London has to offer, and Ryan Ashburton just wants to spend some time with Gemma. But the trip is immediately derailed when Gemma’s father Henry recognizes his brother-in-law Randolph Denhaugh, who disappeared more than thirty years ago on the night he stole a valuable painting from his own parents.

Henry, a retired detective with Scotland Yard, has been keeping tabs on the man’s career as a forger of Old Masters and he warns Randy to stay away from his family. It’s up to Gemma, with the help of her friends, to plunge into the “lowest and vilest alleys” of London to save her father from prison.

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About the author
Vicki Delany is one of Canada’s most prolific and varied crime writers and a national bestseller in the U.S. She has written more than thirty-five books: clever cozies to Gothic thrillers to gritty police procedurals, to historical fiction and novellas for adult literacy. She is currently writing four cozy mystery series: the Year Round Christmas mysteries for Penguin Random House; the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop series and, as Eva Gates, the Lighthouse Library books for Crooked Lane; and the Tea By The Sea mysteries for Kensington.

Vicki is a past president of the Crime Writers of Canada and co-founder and organizer of the Women Killing It crime writing festval. She is the 2019 recipient of the Derrick Murdoch award for contributions to Canadian crime writing. Vicki lives in Prince Edward County, Ontario.

To learn more about Vicki, visit her website at vickidelany.com.

All comments are welcomed.