Gemma Doyle, who runs the Cape Cod Sherlock Holmes museum, decides to travel to England to celebrate Holme's birthday by attending a convention. But the trip is immediately derailed when Gemma's father Henry recognises his brother-in-law Randolph who ran away years before, a troublemaker and forger of Old Masters paintings. Gemma is surprised when Randolph shows up at the Sherlock Holmes convention to sell a series of his sketches based on the Holmes canon. He isn't exactly popular with other attendees, and when he turns up dead after the banquet, Gemma sets out to find the killer.

Gemma Doyle, a transplanted Englishwoman, has returned to the quaint town of West London on Cape Cod to manage her Great Uncle Arthur's Sherlock Holmes Bookshop and Emporium. The shop--located at 222 Baker Street--specializes in the Holmes canon and pastiche, and is also the home of Moriarty the cat. When Gemma finds a rare and potentially valuable magazine containing the first Sherlock Homes story hidden in the bookshop, she and her friend Jayne (who runs the adjoining Mrs. Hudson's Tea Room) set off to find the owner, only to stumble upon a dead body. The highly perceptive Gemma is the police's first suspect, so she puts her consummate powers of deduction to work to clear her name, investigating a handsome rare books expert, the dead woman's suspiciously unmoved son, and a whole family of greedy characters desperate to cash in on their inheritance. But when Gemma and Jayne accidentally place themselves at a second murder scene, it's a race to uncover the truth before the detectives lock them up for good. Fans of Sherlock Holmes will delight in the sleuthing duo of Gemma and Jayne in Elementary, She Read, the clever and captivating series debut by nationally bestselling author Vicki Delany.