A Study in Charlotte

A 16-year-old high school student, Charlotte Holmes attends the Sherringford Academy in Connecticut. She has an angular build, dark hair, and colorless eyes. Although she isn’t conventionally pretty, she draws attention because of her charismatic intensity. She’s British by birth, but her family has sent her to a US prep school as a disciplinary measure. Charlotte is a descendant of the famous detective Sherlock Holmes and shares his analytical powers, as do all her family members. Trained from a very early age to be a keen observer, Charlotte began solving crimes and helping Scotland Yard during her preteen years.

She sometimes has difficulty dealing with her hyperactive mind and resorts to drugs, having developed an addiction to various substances at the age of 12. When August Moriarty is hired as her tutor, Charlotte develops an emotional attachment to him. When he doesn’t return her affection, she implicates him in a drug deal, ruining his career and inviting the wrath of the entire Moriarty clan. The consequences of Charlotte’s reckless behavior have taught her to distrust her emotions. As a result, she’s wary when she first meets James. His kindness and obvious infatuation with her eventually draw Charlotte into trusting him. Ultimately, she steps into her ancestor’s shoes as a great investigator with the descendant of Dr. John Watson at her side.

Like Charlotte, James Watson is a 16-year-old student at Sherringford. Tall and athletic, he was recruited as a star player for the school’s rugby team. Like all his ancestors, James grows attached to a member of the Holmes family. He’s immediately attracted to Charlotte because he knows their shared family history. James has difficulty restraining his temper and gets into fights with classmates. Additionally, he’s angry at his father for remarrying and starting a new family in the US. Although James was born in the US, he spent his formative years in England and misses London. He feels like a fish out of water at the Connecticut school. Unlike Charlotte, who is eccentric, James is ordinary, but his normalcy helps ground his gifted friend. His kindness and good nature eventually win over the frosty detective, and he makes himself indispensable in her pursuit of truth and justice.

James’s good-natured father, Mr. Watson, hasn’t spoken to his son for four years and does his best to overcome their estrangement after James is sent to a school near Mr. Watson’s home. He plays a key role in sheltering his son and Charlotte after someone on campus targets them. In addition, he acts as a buffer when the police try to implicate both teens in crimes at Sherringford.

Like his ancestors, Mr. Watson was the best friend of another Holmes whom he met at university. He and Leander Holmes orchestrated bringing Charlotte and James together. By the end of the novel, James has reconciled himself to his father’s new life, and Mr. Watson offers his son useful tips on how to deal with the unusual members of the Holmes clan.

The investigator assigned to solve two cases of murder and assault that occurred at Sherringford is Ben Shepard. A middle-aged family man, Ben feels some sympathy for Charlotte and James even when they’re implicated in the crimes. Later, when evidence points in another direction, Shepard grudgingly accepts help from the teen detectives, but they often exasperated him as they endanger themselves to bring down the killer. By the novel’s end, the teens present him with a recorded confession even though he’ll never get his hands on the murderer himself.

Charlotte’s older brother, Milo Holmes, runs an international security service and has connections with multiple foreign governments. He also has the capacity to erase crime scenes and “vanish” murderers. This is how he plans to deal with Charlotte’s assailant after she reveals herself. Milo takes a patronizing attitude toward his younger sibling and wants to keep her out of harm’s way. Charlotte usually avoids him, and he keeps an eye on her only from a distance until James solicits his help in solving the crimes on campus. When Milo does intervene, his heavy-handed methods earn Charlotte’s wrath. She forces him to back off and let her solve the mystery. Milo is surprised when she succeeds.

A descendant of criminal mastermind Professor Moriarty, August Moriarty is a mathematical genius in his own right. The Holmes family hires him at age 20 as Charlotte’s live-in tutor. Her infatuation with August proves disastrous. When he doesn’t return her affection, she orchestrates his implication in a drug deal, ruining his academic career and destroying his relationship with his fiancée. To escape prosecution, August is forced to fake his own death by suicide, but he never attempts to contact his fiancée, suggesting that he’s glad to escape the emotional entanglement. August’s contact with the Holmes family causes the Moriartys to disown him. His whereabouts at the end of the novel are unknown.

August’s older brother, Lucien Moriarty, is implicated in the same drug bust that Charlotte orchestrates as an act of revenge against August. Unlike his brother, Lucien is apprehended by the police. He resents Charlotte and seeks payback of his own, thus agreeing to collaborate with August’s fiancée, Bryony, to implicate Charlotte and James in a murder. Eventually, he reveals that his real intent was to discover Charlotte’s weaknesses since she seems to care about nothing. Lucien discovers her affection for James. The novel implies that he’ll use this information against her in a future book in the series.

August’s ex-fiancée is Bryony Downs. After he stages his death by suicide, she thinks he’s dead and seeks out his brother Lucien to help her gain vengeance against Charlotte. She comes to Sherringford posing as a nurse. While there, she orchestrates Charlotte’s date rape at the hands of Dobson and later poisons Dobson, pinning the blame on Charlotte and James. At the end of the novel, they foil her scheme, and Milo captures her. His vast resources enable him to smuggle her out of the country. While she’ll never stand trial for her crimes, Charlotte implies that Milo may have Bryony killed.

Rugby jock Lee Dobson is interested in seducing students at his school. When Bryony tells him about various drugs that might incapacitate a potential target, he eagerly uses oxycodone to have his way with Charlotte. When he brags about this accomplishment to James, the latter gets into a fistfight with him to protect Charlotte’s good name. Dobson later pays for his bad behavior with his life when Bryony poisons him in her scheme to implicate Charlotte as Dobson’s murderer.

A freshman who’s smitten with James, Elizabeth Hartwell asks him to the homecoming dance, which he declines. After the dance, one of Lucien’s operatives attacks her and shoves a fake blue gemstone down her throat. This sets up a reference to another Holmes story and further implicates Charlotte and James. Elizabeth survives, and James visits her in the hospital, expressing his regret that she became involved in his exploits as an amateur sleuth.

Charlotte’s party-girl roommate, Lena, is the daughter of an oil tycoon and enjoys helping Charlotte with her dorm poker games. Later, when Charlotte seeks to deflect suspicion away from herself and James, she gets Lena to stage a fake attack. Lena is relatively fearless and is ready to help in whatever new scheme Charlotte proposes.

James’s roommate, Tom, attends Sherringford on a scholarship and feels outclassed by the other, wealthier students. This is especially true once he begins dating Lena. As a result, Tom succumbs to temptation. When Mr. Wheatley offers him a large amount of cash to spy on Charlotte and James, he agrees. Tom is basically a good person and expresses remorse after James exposes his deception.