This year’s stocking-filler chapbook in aid of Medecins sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders) is The Adventure of the Seven Unnatural Women, a Sherlock Holmes story written at the invitation of J R Campbell and Charles Prepolec, editors of the Gaslight series of Holmes anthologies. It made its first appearance in Gaslight Ghouls. The slender 58-page paperback is produced in a similar style to 2021’s The Governess, channeling the layout and look of those dusty Edwardian volumes you can sometimes find in the more magical old bookshops.

I reckon the roots of the story lie back in the 80s when I pitched an adaptation of H G Wells’ Ann Veronica for a Radio 4 adaptation. The BBC didn’t bite, although they finally got around to it in 2017 with a version by Ellen Dryden. Maybe it’s for the best that it was adapted by a woman, though that wouldn’t have deterred me and it certainly didn’t stop Wells.

Anne Veronica Stanley represented the concept of the ‘New Woman’; educated, independent, radical. The ‘seven unnatural women’ of the title are a self-sufficient colony in a manor house on the Romney Marshes, regarded with deep suspicion by the local men while providing quiet support and occasional refuge to the womenfolk. The tale is mostly narrated by Holmes himself, as he tells it to Watson.

You understand why I do what I do, Watson. It brings me the only true peace I know. My brief time at the abbey had given me no satisfaction. Now the draw of an unresolved mystery was enough to make me brave even the horrors of a country inn.

You can find the chapbook here.

Whatever it makes for MSF, I’ll match.