"[3]Charlotte creates the fiction of a "Sherlock Holmes, consulting detective" and masquerades as his sister to solve crimes[4] within the limited opportunities for women in Victorian England.

Unfortunately, the young man she chooses to seduce, Roger Shrewsbury, is an "idiot", who gets drunk and, mistaking his own wife for another one of his mistresses, tells her all about his planned assignation with Charlotte.

Instead of preventing the rendezvous, Shrewsbury's wife and mother lie in wait and burst in on the two in flagrante, ensuring that Charlotte's disgrace is total.

Rather than accept her parents' sentence of exile to the family's country estate, Charlotte leaves home for a London boarding house, to look for work as a secretary.

After several weeks without success, Charlotte meets a wealthy widow, Mrs. Joanna Watson, whose husband was an army doctor killed in Afghanistan.

Inspector Treadles, a firm believer in "Sherlock Holmes"' abilities, investigates Sackville's death more closely, but does not find any definite proof of foul play until a consultation with "Holmes", via Charlotte, leads him to discover that the local doctor's supply of strychnine – the most effective antidote for an overdose of chloral – was removed before the night of Mr. Sackville's death.

Armed with this revelation, Charlotte solves the case: Sackville molested his niece, Clara, as a young girl, then discarded her after she reached adolescence.

"[2] Constance Grady for Vox gave it two and a half stars saying "A Study in Scarlet Women has a killer premise, some interesting character work, and a regrettably poorly structured plot.