Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating * * * *
To give life to a character is a privilege, to breathe existence into one who is so established by name alone is an honour, and so as all are aware of the existence and thoughts of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson, so surely therefore must acknowledge that without Mrs Helen Hudson, the security of home, the quiet reassurance of stability in nature, both men might have led very different lives.
The reader is often given scant detail of the one woman who was a constant in both the early lives of the greatest fictional detective and his confidante turned biographer, even on television and film the inspector of the files and casebooks of the celebrated detective, the presence of Mrs. Hudson is often one portrayed as a lonely older woman, the spinster dressed in mourning black and whose literary existence is to act as a backdrop, a device, scenery to the lives of the men who rent rooms from her.
If there was a character deserving of moving out the shadows and filling the large empty space that had surrounded her, then Mrs Helen Hudson is arguably by far one who’s story demands to be told, even at the expense who revere the works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and one to whom the legend is placed in the adept and caring hands of Liz Hedgecock; a writer who understands that behind the myth of any man, stands a woman who wants her own story and experiences told with the same value and the same importance.
A House of Mirrors tells the tale of a young woman trapped by circumstances beyond her control, the reasons why her appearance in later Sherlock Holmes mysteries is one of calm assurance, even understanding that is framed by her compassion and care for the two men in her charge, and how she came to be the erstwhile and resilient woman to whom the consulting genius and the famed doctor could rely.
Unlike other fictional tales, A House of Mirrors takes a sense of supreme will to put to the many fans who cannot get enough of the inhabitants of 221B Baker Street a carefully laid out series of events that does not damage the established timeline of those drawn out by their original author; such is the respect shown to the mysterious Holmes that even a dalliance of romance to which the prescribed showing of asexuality that the man exhibited throughout his narrated life, is one that does not raise an eyebrow of concern, nor indeed contempt that some readers might excruciatingly exhibit.
The novel does not set out to whitewash nor deceive the reader, there is no sense of readjusted justice prevailing, the modern cancelling of culture which would suggest that Holmes was just a foil for the real brain behind the solver of clues and murder, instead it redresses the life off someone who was invaluable to the detective, her own back story, the reasons to why this particular woman was in a position to offer rooms to two total strangers, and it is a tale not only told well, but with heart, with fierce conviction, with upmost respect to the source material.
Liz Hedgecock’s A House Of Mirrors is a welcome addition to the pantheon of literature that encompasses the hero of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s imagination; a tale well told, a woman’s voice restored and heard in the same way that Hailie Rubenhold was able to show in her true assessment of the five victims of Jack The Ripper. A genuine piece of intriguing literature.
Ian D. Hall