Woman Detective

Annette Kerner was Britain’s most famous sleuth in the early 1950s; she called herself Mrs. Sherlock Holmes and ran the Mayfair Detective Agency on Baker Street.

Her memoir was ghost-written by an unnamed journalist, and it’s a rollicking and often unbelievable read, from Annette’s recruitment by the Secret Service to how she first became a private eye.

Annette’s tales of stolen paintings, Cambridge shootings, Park Lane divorces, blackmail, and poisonings are often far-fetched, and her memoir made me want to find out how much was true. I eventually discovered that Mrs. Sherlock Holmes was not the person she said she… show more.