I do enjoy these books! Well, I've only read two of them thus far, but the sentiment stands. I particularly enjoy the voice of the protagonist, Mary, who is shrewd and learned and with an extremely cutting sense of humour. The mystery here is a fairly slight thing, rather less impressive than the characterisation, but I still got an enormous amount of pleasure out of reading it. Regarding the ending, however... I am wholly unconvinced by the sudden swerve to romantic that the central relationship has taken. I mean really wholly unconvinced. Because it was so suddenly presented at the end, I'm withholding judgement until I read the next book, but the Holmes and Russell pairing worked so well for me as a mentorship/friendship, and I'm honestly disinclined to overlook the forty odd year age gap between them.