Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 8.5/10

Whilst Arthur Conan Doyle is rightly lauded by many as the godfather of the British detective, it can also be argued, quite intently, that because of the Victorian and Edwardian attitudes that prevailed during his writing career, his ability to write about women was poor at best, and at worst, damning.  Of course, you write what you know, and that world in which Sherlock Holmes was born into, was one forced by the rampant progression of the notion of Empire and what it meant to be British, what it meant to be a man.

It is a shame that for all the brilliance displayed within the various casebooks and short stories of the great detective, women, with one notable exception, don’t offer the reader the timeless feel of even the most languorous of exploited tropes that guide the reader through the labyrinth of mysteries of the age. It is a shame that has been righted by Liz Hedgecock as she has given the estimable Mrs. Hudson her own prominence in two previous works, and caps off the trilogy in splendid style in A Spider’s Web.

The third in the forwarding of a character who was criminally underused, no more than an effect on the pages of Doyle’s otherwise masterpieces, is to be admired, is to be shouted from the rooftops of what some might call revisionist literature, but is in reality a levelling, an admission that even the finest of authors can be seen to have made a mistake in how they used their secondary characters.

A Spider’s Web is the story of Sherlock Holmes housekeeper, turned lover, turned equal, as her own detective skills are granted the belief of reveal, as she is given that one boon to the hero in any tale, a mortal enemy slighted in the past who finds a way to mark the hero’s life as potentially forfeit.

Liz Hedgecock has given the reader an exercise in extravagance of a powerful weapon when it comes to writing about the issues that kept Victorian women in such a stranglehold of emotions, even decades after the era of the late Queen’s passing. To show a strong intelligent woman is a right for the reader, to have them thrive in a period when they were either relegated to one of supposed prostitute, show girl, older matriarch, or victim, takes an understanding of femininity and the strength of the female mind, and Mrs. Hudson, as a detective, learning the trade for herself whilst supposedly in the shadow of the great Sherlock Holmes, is nothing short of a terrific read.

Mrs. Hudson steps finally out of the shadows herself, she is promoted from the pages of literary history and away from the supporting character, one to whom death in the guise of villainy can now stalk.

Ian D. Hall