A Study in Charlotte is the debut novel from Brittany Cavallaro, featuring the ancestors of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson.
The first book in a witty, suspenseful new trilogy about a brilliant new crime-solving duo: the teen descendants of Sherlock Holmes and John Watson. This clever page-turner will appeal to fans of Maureen Johnson and Ally Carter.
Jamie Watson has always been intrigued by Charlotte Holmes; after all, their great-great-great-grandfathers are one of the most infamous pairs in history. But the Holmes family has always been odd, and Charlotte is no exception. She’s inherited Sherlock’s volatility and some of his vices — and when Jamie and Charlotte end up at the same Connecticut boarding school, Charlotte makes it clear she’s not looking for friends.
But when a student they both have a history with dies under suspicious circumstances, ripped straight from the most terrifying of the Sherlock Holmes stories, Jamie can no longer afford to keep his distance. Danger is mounting and nowhere is safe — and the only people they can trust are each other.
Tell us five random facts about yourself.
- I went to an arts boarding school called Interlochen. It was like the north woods version of Fame, except it snowed all the time, and I wrote a lot of poems, which would make for a really boring movie.
- I had a radio show in college called “The Murder Mystery Hour,” but we mostly played indie pop.
- A go-to for two truths and a lie is that when I was 15, I was a contestant on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire. (It’s true.) I didn’t get any money out of it, just a VHS recording. Lots of awkward teen me in a twinset. And now it’s on YouTube somewhere.
- I’m actually a poet by training. My first book of poems, GIRL-KING, came out from the University of Akron Press last year.
- My husband does literally all the cooking, because I can burn water.
Describe your novel in five words.
Sherlock redux at boarding school.
Why did you choose to write about the relatives of Sherlock and Watson?
I really, really wanted a girl version of the great detective. I love the adaptations that have come out recently, but it seemed like people were bending over backward to reimagine Sherlock Holmes as anything but a woman. I love reading about girl geniuses, and about Sherlock Holmes, and some of my favorite stories are ones where people struggle against ideas of inheritance and expectations. Since Sherlockians play at this thing we call the Game, where we pretend Holmes and Watson were real and that Watson wrote the stories, it seemed kind of organic to say, okay, they’re real. Let’s fast forward a hundred fifty years. What does the world look like now, with a girl Holmes and her boy Watson?
What kind of research did you have to do to write this novel?
Sadly, not as much as you’d think. I have most of the Sherlock Holmes stories and novels rattling around wholesale in my head. I definitely double-checked all my facts after I was done drafting for the day, but building Jamie Watson and Charlotte Holmes’s characters and embedding Easter eggs as I went was pretty much pure play.
What is your favorite incarnation of Sherlock Holmes?
I love, love Jeremy Brett from the Granada television series from the 1980s. He’s brilliant and vulnerable and genteel and impatient and just so much fun to watch. It’s like seeing the Holmes I imagined in my head as a kid.
Why did you choose a Connecticut prep school for the setting? Did you have a particular one in mind when you created Sherringford? (This Connecticut girl is curious!)
I went to a boarding school that was definitely a lot different than Sherringford (for one thing, I loved it way more than Jamie likes his), but I drew on a lot of the everyday aspects of being away at school when I wrote A Study in Charlotte. The strange twin feelings of isolation and togetherness, the independence you have and the rules you have to follow (or break, in their case), dorm life. I went to college with some kids who’d attended some of the more prestigious, traditional boarding schools, and I was always interested to hear about it, especially when the discussion was about class and privilege. I definitely drew on that, too, when building Sherringford!
As for Connecticut – I feel so terrible even writing this, but it was ultimately a coin flip between setting the school there or in Massachusetts. I’ve spent a bit more time in CT, and I think it’s really lovely—and, like MA, it’s a place where quite a few tony boarding schools are located — so it ultimately won out.
What is the writing process like for you?
Either awful or really fun. If I hit my stride, I can draft all day, but sometimes it’s pulling teeth just to get five hundred words down in an afternoon. Some of it I blame on my background as a poet. I’m used to focusing on making every word matter, and that can be hard when you’re writing eighty thousand of them for a novel.
What one YA novel do you wish you had when you were a teen?
That’s out now? Probably Parker Peevyhouse’s WHERE FUTURES END, because that book does things I didn’t know you could do in a YA novel. It’s somehow sci-fi and fantasy and literary all at once, with these wild imaginative leaps and amazing propulsion. I read it straight through.
Fill in the blank
If I weren’t a writer I would be the world’s worst YouTube beauty vlogger.
If I could have one supernatural power it would be invisibility, so I could get more reading done.
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