What happens in Sherlock Holmes’ world when the master detective is away and Dr. Watson is kidnapped? In this episode, we sit down with author Jeri Westerson to do a deep dive into her An Irregular Detective Mystery series, a thrilling and historically rich take on the Victorian detective genre. When Dr. Watson goes missing, it’s up to Tim Badger, a former Baker Street Irregular, and his partner, the scientifically-minded Ben Watson (no relation!), to solve a case that could make or break their fledgling detective agency.
Join us as we explore the foggy streets of Victorian London and beyond with Jeri Westerson, who shares the inspiration behind her unique characters. We discuss how her stories exist as Sherlock Holmes pastiche books, while still carving out their own distinct identity. This interview serves as a fascinating The Misplaced Physician review, detailing the plot where Badger and Watson must unravel cryptic clues left in the untold tales of the Sherlock Holmes canon to save their hero. We also explore the core themes of the Tim Badger and Ben Watson series, including the rigid class differences of the era and the challenges faced by our working-class heroes. Jeri explains the fascinating historical accuracy she weaves into her novels, from the shocking reality of mummy unwrapping parties to the surprising efficiency of 12-times-a-day mail delivery in 1895. A major focus is the character of Miss Ellsie Moira Littleton, a determined and educated Victorian era female journalist modeled on real-life reporters of the day, like Nellie Bly. Finally, Jeri gives us a sneak peek into the future of the series, including the upcoming books “The Vampire Client” and “The Magician’s Misadventure.”
Introduction
Blaine DeSantis: Welcome to Books and Looks, where we do a deep dive with authors to help you discover your next great read. When Dr. Watson is kidnapped and Sherlock Holmes is out of the country, it falls to the unlikely detective duo of Tim Badger and Benjamin Watson to solve the case, using their street smarts and scientific method. Racing against time through London’s foggy streets and into the English countryside, these protégés of Sherlock Holmes must unravel cryptic clues left by the good doctor while navigating class differences, professional jealousies, and their own budding romances. With the help of a determined female journalist, street urchins that they’ve dubbed the Dean’s Street Irregulars, and a particularly noisy dog, they’ll push the boundaries of Victorian propriety and possibly the law to rescue their hero before it’s too late. I’m Blaine DeSantis, This is Books and Looks, and today we’re interviewing Jeri Westerson about her new book, The Misplaced Physician. Jeri Westerson, welcome to Books and Looks.
Jeri Westerson: Well, thank you.
Blaine DeSantis: We are glad to have you here, and I’ll tell you what, I love your books in this series. I’ve read all of them, and I think they are just remarkable. Really, really, really enjoy them. Thank you for writing them.
Jeri Westerson: Thank you.
Blaine DeSantis: Before we get into this and start talking about specifics, why don’t you give us a brief overview about your book? This is called The Misplaced Physician. And who are the main characters?
Introducing “The Misplaced Physician” and the Irregular Detective Mystery Series
Jeri Westerson: The Misplaced Physician, the main characters are Tim Badger, Ben Watson and Miss Littleton. And Tim Badger is a former Baker Street Irregular and hence the title of the series An Irregular Detective Mystery. He was one of Sherlock Holmes’ street urchins that he hired to be his eyes and ears in London. They could go anywhere because they knew London by the back of their hand and they wouldn’t be seen. Who notices a poor street urchin? So they were perfect spies for Holmes. And as Tim Badger grew, he got the idea that maybe he liked to be a detective like Mr. Holmes.
At one point he aged out, because an 11-year-old ragamuffin wandering around the street is not noticed, but an 18-year-old guy hanging around your place gets a little too suspicious. So he knew that he couldn’t do it forever. So out he went at 18 and decided to begin this enterprise of being a detective with all the hubris and chutzpah he could put together. But the problem is, he’s this cockney lad from the East End, and it’s going to be tough to get clients to come to you. So he meets Ben Watson, no relation to Dr. Watson. He meets him while he’s running from the police.
And he falls through the roof of the blacksmith’s shop where Ben Watson is working and they get to talking and he gathers Ben into his scheme to become a detective. And when he finds out his name is Watson, then he knows it’s fate. I can have my own Watson to help me do detecting. So that’s how they get together. So they’re doing this for five years or so in the East End in their horrible slum flat that they live in, and not getting a lot of clients, because who wants to come there?
Later, we meet Miss Littleton, who already knows about Tim Badger, because she knows that he has a police record, and she is a baronet’s daughter. So this is minor nobility, but both her parents have died a while ago, and she took on this career as a journalist, and she’s very interested in crime and criminals and reporting on that. So she knows about Tim, and at first she’s their nemesis. She is trying to prove that this scheme, quote-unquote scheme of theirs to be detectives, is just a front to break into houses and do more criminal activity. But she soon learns that, no, they’re quite honest about this, and they’re studious about it, and they want to get started.
And what happens is that Holmes sees this about them. He sees that they’re clever, that they got the hubris. Well, Tim does, anyway. And that Watson is very cerebral and more scientifically minded. And they’re trying. But they can’t get ahead because of where they live and how they’re dressed. And so he takes it upon himself to rent them a flat in Soho on Dean Street. Which is not as high-class a neighborhood as Baker Street, a little lower than that, but much better than where they came from, and supplies them with enough money to get new clothing so they can present themselves well, and they begin. And they’re pretty good.
Blaine DeSantis: So this book, this is now the third big case that we know about. There are other cases, obviously. But what is this Misplaced Physician all about?
Jeri Westerson: Well, the physician that’s misplaced is Dr. Watson, and he’s been kidnapped. And Holmes is out of the country doing something for the government, as he does occasionally, and can’t be reached. And so Mrs. Hudson, when she gets the ransom notes, comes to Watson and Badger and Watson to get their help because she can’t go to the police. So she knows that they’re going to do it. They’re going to do it. And they must do it, because if they don’t succeed in this, that’s the end of their detecting agency, because if they can’t do that.
Blaine DeSantis: I think you’re very right. Well, that’s good. That gives a brief overview of who we’re dealing with here. But what was your inspiration behind creating this Badger and Watson existing or coexisting almost within Sherlock Holmes’ world, but operating independently? How did you come up with that?
Crafting a Sherlock Holmes Pastiche with a Unique Twist
Jeri Westerson: Well, I wrote my Crispin Guest Medieval Noir series, and when I finished that at 15 books, I needed a replacement series to be a big deal to replace that. So I came up with two ideas, and one of them was a Tudor mystery series, the King’s Fool Mysteries, where Henry VIII’s real court jester is the reluctant sleuth. And then I wanted, I was getting an idea for another Victorian book. I wrote several years ago, a gaslamp steampunk romantic series called The Enchanter Chronicles. And it was a neo-Victorian London with the foundation of all the things correct, the street names and the handsome cabs and trains, but also dirigibles and demons and all that good fun fantasy stuff.
And I did all that research. And just because you’re writing a fantasy doesn’t mean you don’t do actual historical research. Because you want that foundation to be correct and real so that readers can relate to that. And then they’ll buy all the rest that you’re selling. So I had all this research. And it was fascinating because I’d spent all these years in medieval, dense research into the medieval period. Now the Tudor period. And now this was all new because there’s photographs you can look at and the newspapers and all these other avenues for research that you didn’t have before. And I wanted to write a Victorian book. Well, what Victorian book would be high concept and get people’s attention other than a Sherlock Holmes pastiche? So this is really pastiche adjacent.
Because it’s not focusing on Holmes. I’m not writing about Holmes and Watson, although Sherlock does show up from time to time in the books. You can’t have a Sherlockian pastiche without him showing up. But I wanted to focus on my own characters, my own unique characters. So I cottoned on to this idea of, well, the Baker Street Irregulars. They only showed up in three stories, and yet they loom large in everybody’s imagination. So why not? Create my own former Baker Street Irregular, team him with his own Watson, literally, and then get going and just show them trying and the things that they would have to go through to understand how to do their deducing and trying to use Holmes’ method, sometimes successfully, sometimes not. So just a couple of blokes. And there’s a lot of humor, as you can imagine, and a lot of adventures.
Blaine DeSantis: Well, now I’m hearing you say, well, I had this series, I had that series, I did this. How long have you been writing?
From Newspaper Reporter to Historical Novelist: Jeri Westerson’s Writing Journey
Jeri Westerson: Well, I’ve been writing since I could pick up a crayon, but I’ve been published only about 20 or so years, 35 years, something like that. So I’ve been doing a lot of writing and I learned how to get to the point because I was myself a newspaper reporter for a while, for about eight or so years, and I learned the craft of getting to the point, as many of our other favorite authors from the past have done. We have Edgar Allan Poe, we have Mark Twain, Jack London, and many others who have been newspaper journalists, providing stories for their newspapers and magazines. And it is a good way to learn deadlines and get edited so that you can’t be grasping onto all your little darlings. You have to let them go, and then you tell your little story. Even a feature has a beginning, a middle, and an end. So these are all ways to learn to write. And so, I’ve got a lot of books and series. If you go to my website, you’ll see them all.
Blaine DeSantis: I have some of the other series, but this one I got from the very beginning, so I love this one. One of the things I notice in all your books here in this series is you start talking about class differences. That’s fascinating that you do that because not a lot of books back there dealing with that mystery Victorian era talk about these class differences. What made you get into that?
Navigating Victorian England’s Rigid Class System
Jeri Westerson: Well, I’ve actually always been into that. And the first few books that I wrote and tried to peddle to publishers were always about, they were medieval, set in the Middle Ages, but they were always about ordinary people and extraordinary circumstances. Well, publishers didn’t want to publish those. They wanted the court. If you’re going to be in the chivalric period, let’s see some knights and kings and queens. I just didn’t, that wasn’t an interest of mine. I was more interested in people that readers could relate to, and those some of those books that were rejected I self-published, and they were perfectly respectable sales on those because, as people told me, I could really relate to that guy or I’m really sorry for them or I’ve been in that circumstance, whatever. So but it translated much better to mysteries. So I was able to write a medieval mystery because even though my characters were ordinary people, extraordinary circumstances, they were solving a crime. And occasionally, they walked in and out of court.
So class is very interesting to me. And of course, Miss Littleton, she’s now straddling a couple of different social situations, because she used to be nobility, and now she’s not. But she still seems like she presents herself as nobility, so people treat her differently, and yet she’s writing about the poor and crime and all of those things in London at the time period. And it’s also a way to comment about our contemporary setting, things that are happening now, and couch it in a historical setting.
Blaine DeSantis: Very interesting.
Jeri Westerson: Especially I found with my medieval, my Tudor series I’m writing, researching Henry VIII, I sure found a lot of parallels with Donald Trump. And so I can’t help but comment. It’s told through the jester’s eyes, Will Somers’s eyes, so he can comment about all these things that happen to be happening now. And the same thing happens in the Victorian period about the poor as well. How the different servants are treated like dumb children and that people are poor because it’s their own fault. And we keep hearing that rhetoric right now. So it’s a safe way to comment. If readers pass right over it, fine. If readers get it, then that’s even better, great.
Blaine DeSantis: That’s wonderful, very, very good. I like that. And by the way, you talk about Miss Ellsie Moira Littleton, she’s one of the new women. You have her as a new woman of the Victorian era, I should say. And she’s educated, she’s professional, she advocates for women’s rights. Again, this is all part of what you were planning to do when you started the series.
Miss Littleton and the Rise of the Victorian Era Female Journalist
Jeri Westerson: Yes, now this is a little early for the suffragette movement, that’s more the Edwardian period, but the rumblings were beginning. And because she had debts, her father left her with a lot of debts, so she really did have to have a job, a decent job. So she’s now understanding the same situation that others have. And she is modeled on female reporters of the day. And as a matter of fact, in 1895, and even a little earlier, every major newspaper had at least one female reporter. And they weren’t just commenting on women’s issues and fashion and whatever. They were actually doing hard news and investigative reporting.
And in fact, they were doing some really dangerous things. And of course, there’s Nellie Bly from America, who was a newspaper reporter, a young, pretty good looking newspaper reporter, and she got herself into an insane asylum because she wanted to report on the inhumane treatment of the insane. So she got herself stuck in an asylum for a while. Her editor knew, so he could get her out. And she helped social reform for the time. And that’s what Elsie is trying to do with the poor.
Blaine DeSantis: Very good.
Jeri Westerson: So, it’s interesting that so many women were employed as reporters in this time period. We’re thinking that that’s later or that I just did that to do something extra. But no, she was a real person.
Blaine DeSantis: That’s good. By the way, Nellie Bly, have you ever read the book 80 Days? Nellie Bly.
Jeri Westerson: Right, she did it in 78 or something like that. I don’t know. She beat that.
Blaine DeSantis: And then the rival, Cosmopolitan, sent another person west. Nellie went east. Cosmo sent somebody west. Neither of these women knew each other, knew what was going on, and Nellie ended up winning and getting in there earlier. But that was a fantastic book and a fantastic thing that she put on. Because they didn’t know what to do with her. And they were losing money. And they said, hey, let’s create this race to see if we can get around the globe.
Jeri Westerson: So many women were doing these kinds of dangerous things. There was one woman in a British paper who she got into full scuba gear, scuba gear as it was in the Victorian period, to try it out. That’s kind of crazy. It was, but good for them.
Blaine DeSantis: One of the things you have in this book are these untold Sherlock Holmes tales or untold tales, but they’re there. Explain what that’s all about. And how did you find out about these untold tales?
Unearthing the “Untold Tales” of the Sherlock Holmes Canon
Jeri Westerson: Oh, my gosh. And there’s a lot of them.
Blaine DeSantis: Really?
Jeri Westerson: Untold tales. There are tales when they’re just cast off lines in the stories. They’re just mentioning these adventures that they’ve had before. Sometimes with Holmes and Watson together, and sometimes just Holmes is talking about or just mentioning an adventure case that he had well before he met Watson. And I think one of the most famous ones is the Giant Rat of Sumatra. What a great title that is. But there’s no story. Doyle didn’t write one. It’s just mentioned. So there’s a lot of those, and you just have to find them in the stories.
So I gathered a bunch of them, making sure they were written before 1895, or at least set before 1895, because many of them were, like the first Holmes story was set in 1881, but it was published in 1887. So that gives you an idea of Doyle’s moving around in the time period. So some of them had titles, or Holmes is mentioning them in such a way that it’s a title. So I had to either use those titles or make up my own. And I definitely had to make up the actual stories about them, because there isn’t one. He may mention a past case and then mention one little thing about it, and that’s it. So I had to make these up. And that’s because it’s one of the clues. When Dr. Watson was kidnapped, he had dropped his casebook on the floor in 221 Baker Street. And it was open to a particular page. Now, Badger and Watson had to decide, was this really a clue he’s leaving or was it just accidental? So that was one of the things.
Blaine DeSantis: Well, you had to be a very detailed reader of Sherlock Holmes to get all these things.
Jeri Westerson: Well, I do it all the time. I read it a lot. Read them a lot. Take a lot of notes. There’s also, let’s face it, there’s compendiums of all the notes and some different kinds of this and that. But for the very, very sharp readers, I also, when Holmes is talking, I pull particular quotes from the different stories so that you get that feeling that it’s this Victorian thing. And I really study the Doyle canon and I use it as if they were historical documents.
Blaine DeSantis: Okay.
Jeri Westerson: Do not veer from the historical documents. In this case where Dr. Watson is kidnapped is not mentioned, but they don’t mention everything that ever happened to them in their stories. So could be as long as it makes sense. And Holmes doesn’t have a brother, sister, daughter, son, wife, lover, whatever. He would not have the latter at all.
Blaine DeSantis: Yes.
Jeri Westerson: Keeping it within canon. And that makes life easier, actually, for me. And I think it makes it more fun for the readers.
Blaine DeSantis: Well, that’s interesting. Now, you talk about, now, they’re working at the same time, but they don’t have the same way of gathering evidence. Holmes deducts everything. That’s not Badger and Watson’s way of doing things, is it?
Badger and Watson’s Scientific Methods vs. Holmes’s Deduction
Jeri Westerson: Well, they try. They know the method. And Holmes is constantly telling them, use the method. You know my method, do it, apply it. But they’re not great at it. And to tell you the truth, Doyle is not a playfair mystery writer. Playfair mystery writers give you all the clues. They don’t lay it out for you like that. You have to find them, but they’re there, like Agatha Christie always did, and Dorothy Sayers always did. But he rather, Holmes knows what kind of cigar ash or what kind of soil that is, because he’s written monographs about them. And you can read contemporary from that time period monographs about those things, because they did have them. But as the average reader you can’t follow, you can’t do the deducing that he does because you don’t have that information. Badger and Watson occasionally can do it, they do it a little bit, but even Dr. Watson admits, I’ve been with Holmes for 14 years and I still can’t do it. So I feel okay about that.
Blaine DeSantis: Tim Badger doesn’t use this deductive scientific reasoning as much as Ben Watson does. And Ben uses things like cigar ash and friction ridge skin marks. I’ve never heard fingerprints called that. Tell us about that. Was that really being used back in 1895?
Jeri Westerson: Yeah, it was. Friction ridge skin marks are your fingerprints. And they had different names for them. And about this time, a little earlier, somebody figured out that everybody has individual fingerprints, and that’s interesting, but it’s not applicable too much because not everybody’s fingerprinted. But if you find a fingerprint on something and then you capture and arrest somebody and then you fingerprint them and match it to that, that’s a way to really get a conviction. And in one of the Holmes stories, Norwood Builder I believe, the detective is proud of himself and shows Holmes that he found a bloody fingerprint, like it’s near a hat rack or something. And then when he stalks away, Watson goes to Holmes and says, how come we didn’t find that? And Holmes, a little smugly, says, because it wasn’t there yesterday. It got planted, and that leads him to know what happened in the story.
So it was, in fact, the Sherlock Holmes stories really began Scotland Yard using more scientific methods. Doyle is really credited with ushering that scientific world into detective science, using science for these things. Now, it was small at first. They could detect if blood was there, if it was human or an animal. I’m not sure if they could type them yet to match them to a specific person yet. But that was on the horizon. That was easily coming. So, all that stuff there was forensic happening. Now that’s what was hard about writing medieval stuff. Zero forensics, none whatsoever. So it all had to be a different way of finding out who the criminal was.
Blaine DeSantis: Right. Yeah, there’s all kinds of fun stuff. Well one of the things I like about your book is the authenticity that you throw in there and they’re just little things but they’re for instance, and I’m going to go back to book two, which was, I love book two, The Mummy of Mayfair. I love that. Where did you find out about mummy unwrapping parties? Oh, my God, that was classic.
The Role of Historical Authenticity: Mummy Parties, Mail Delivery, and More
Jeri Westerson: That was one of the things as I’m reading about Victorian life and coming across the fad. And by the way, that’s a word they used then, fad. You think it’s 1960s, but no, they were fads. Egyptomania. They were crazy for Egyptian stuff. And this was well before Carter discovered King Tut’s tomb. That’s in 1922. So we’re talking 1895 here. So, around about 1840s, 60s, that’s when they started doing the unwrapping parties. And basically, it’s just like it sounds. You get yourself a mummy, and you invite a bunch of your friends. And you open the sarcophagus, you take this mummy out, and you start unwrapping him because it’s so very interesting.
And it began as a scientific sort of thing. It’s like being invited by Jacques Cousteau to talk about fish. So you’re doing this, and you’re unwrapping them. And by the way, mummies are not just wrapped around like this. They are wrapped like woven cloth. It’s especially intricate weaving that they do with the linen. And they secrete little charms, little tokens in there for good luck charms on the way to their afterlife. So as you’re unwrapping, you find these and you auction them off or give them away. And after you’ve explained how mummification happens and what’s going on here and have you got them all unwrapped, then the fellow is ground up into powder and given as souvenirs in little bottles to everybody who came. Now, that’s, how fun is that?
Blaine DeSantis: No, that’s fun.
Jeri Westerson: Now, the medieval period, they used mummy powder in medicine. And I suppose you could put a little dose of that in your lawn and then really go out to sleep. So that’s what it is. So that was part of the fun. And so that’s obviously part of the fun.
Blaine DeSantis: Well, in this book, in this book now, Jeri, people think I’m old when I tell them I remember when I got postal delivery twice a day. Back in 1895, 12 times a day they got the mail.
Jeri Westerson: Can you imagine that? 12 times a day. Well, you and I also remember morning papers and evening papers. Now they had morning, afternoon, and evening papers, newspapers. And if you ever looked at a newspaper from this time period, they are dense. It ends with words. There’s no pictures and big USA Today graphics. It’s just words. Because that’s your life. You’re devouring all this information. And 12 times a day in London, not anywhere else, maybe other big cities they did, but 12 times a day. I was really surprised about that, too. I was researching how much stamps were, the post office in general, where the post offices were, the main post offices, and discovered 12 times a day. Damn, that’s better than an email sometimes, because you could just, so you could write a ransom note in the morning. Sometime in the, maybe the late morning, you can tell them where to put the drop. And if you have another question or something like that, or later in the afternoon, if the drop didn’t happen quite right, they can berate you and tell you to do something. All in one day. So it’s convenient.
Blaine DeSantis: You know, friends, and you’re saying, well, Blaine, what does this matter? This matters because these are all things in the book. There’s a specific reason we want to have with the mail and why are people going there and what’s happening. Everything I’m talking to Jeri about, that’s there in the book. And you got to know this to really, really appreciate not just the book but the work this woman does. She’s amazing. I think you’re great with all this stuff, and I do.
Jeri Westerson: I do. That’s why I like the afterword. I always have a very detailed afterword to let you know what’s real. I want you to know that this was real and this was happening and this was happening.
Blaine DeSantis: Right. Well, now, this book, the first two adventures of Badger and Watson are all contained in London. Now you take them outside of London for this. Is this going to be happening in the future? And does this make it easier for you as a writer to get him outside of Center City, London?
Expanding the World: Character Dynamics and Supporting Cast
Jeri Westerson: Yeah, in all the Holmes stories, he travels to the country a lot.
Blaine DeSantis: Right.
Jeri Westerson: And so it’s not all just London. But I like to set them in London because London becomes a character. And so we like to be in London. But, yeah, you got to go out of it. In fact, in this book, it’s the first time they’ve ever traveled by train. Because being poor lads from the east end of London, you couldn’t even afford a handsome cab. No, you couldn’t afford that. And you couldn’t afford a train. And there was no need for you to go anyway, because where are you going to go? You had to work six days a week. So you could maybe afford an omnibus, which is a horse-drawn bus is what it was in those days, and maybe the underground, which was there as well, yes. But mostly you’re just hoofing it. You’re walking. If you can’t walk within a certain amount of time, then you’re not going there.
So having to be on the train was different for them and how do they feel about that and how is this situation happening? And it happened because Miss Ellsie Moira Littleton got in the way. She wanted to be when this story happened, she wanted to write about it as it was happening. So she insinuated herself in the story, but she knew all about rail traffic and all the little details. I like to add little details like the Bradshaw.
Blaine DeSantis: Yeah, yeah.
Jeri Westerson: And mentioned in the Doyle stories, because Holmes was saying to Watson, well, we’ve got to go there. Grab your Bradshaw. And if you don’t know what that is, that it was a compendium of all the schedules, railway schedules throughout England and Ireland. England, Scotland, and Ireland. And prices. So you knew, okay, I could hop in this station from London and get to there by this time, by noon or whatever. So this was something that they used for a long time until the ABC came along that they used in England. And that was used in an Agatha Christie story, by the way. Not telling. Called the ABC murders. But, and then that got phased out. But that had tourist attractions on that one. But anyway, it’s just little details like that. And I had to research how much a ticket costs and how much an apartment is. So anyway.
Yeah, it’s good to get your characters to learn new things so they can use that later when they go out and do their investigations. Most of them are going to be in London, but the next one is going to be traveling as well.
Blaine DeSantis: Well, the train was a lot of fun. I’ve got to be honest with you. I love the train in this book and how you used it. And it was, I thought, really well done. And I got a big kick out of it. I also got a kick out of the dog. The dog’s in there. We’re friends. We have a dog in the book, too.
Jeri Westerson: There’s a dog. There’s a dog. The something, the secret of the… the dog that did something in the nighttime.
Blaine DeSantis: The Hound of the Baskervilles, yeah. Well now, you explore here and you used, I really, really thought you start using the upstairs downstairs in this book, but it’s not just in this book. They take help from all sorts of different people. I mean, the last book was the uncle down on the river, if I’m not mistaken. And we have other things. Again, is this a deliberate thing? Are we starting to see this happening now more and more, or did you sort of embellish what was going on?
Jeri Westerson: I like to have my characters have a real life. I hope that you think that they’re living their life before you open the cover, and they’re continuing to live their life once you’ve closed it when you’re done. So to have that, then they have backstory and they have a life.
Blaine DeSantis: Yeah.
Jeri Westerson: And Ben Watson’s uncle is someone who will show up again, of course. Because it’s good narrative-wise to have more people that could come into the story and create other issues and problems and stories.
Blaine DeSantis: Also, the way Badger operates, as opposed to how Sherlock, with his deductive reading, it’s great to have people feed him this information. He goes zooming here and there and making all this stuff. It fits in perfectly. I got to be honest with you.
Jeri Westerson: He begins his own Dean Street Irregulars because he knows how that worked. He was one, and he says, you know what? I can do this, too. And Watson didn’t believe him, but he said, that worked out pretty well. Street kids that know what they’re doing, and he just pays them right. And he tells them you don’t string out the days to get more pay out of it because I’m on to you. I know that. Yeah, that’s really good.
Blaine DeSantis: I really enjoyed that you use the ladies, the housekeeper and the maid, and you actually gave them a part, something to do. Now it wasn’t major, but it was something they had to do and it did help, no doubt about it. But you needed them and they were happy to do that. I really enjoyed that.
Jeri Westerson: Again, it adds more depth to all the characters and the fact that they felt comfortable asking them because they were a little better than servants themselves. So they got it. And they needed the help. And as you say, they were glad to do it. And so he got the maid and the landlady, essentially, Mrs. Kelly, the landlady, to help them out. And they did a great job.
Blaine DeSantis: They can’t be every place at one time. So they had these ladies help. And away we go. Now, we just talked a little bit. You touched on your other series. You wrote medieval series, Tudor series. Are they done? Have you finished those? Have they come to logical conclusions?
What’s Next for Badger and Watson? A Look at Future Books
Jeri Westerson: The only ones that are done is the Medieval Noir series, the Steampunk Gaslamp series trilogy, The Enchanter Chronicles, that’s done. I have a Romancy four books, Booke of the Hidden series, that’s done. But I’m not done with the Tudor series. I still have three more books to go. One book per wife of King Henry.
Blaine DeSantis: Okay.
Jeri Westerson: But this one, I don’t know how long it’s going to go. I don’t know. I think I will be writing them for a little while because I just enjoy it. And I don’t know if there will be an end book or not particularly, but Doyle didn’t write, well, he thought he was writing an ending, and he had to bring it back.
Blaine DeSantis: Right.
Jeri Westerson: So we’ll just see. We’ll just see how long that one goes on. So Badger and Watson, I hope, will be going a long time.
Blaine DeSantis: You bring in your afterward, you talk about the next book, which is I think called The Vampire Client, if I’m not mistaken. Is that one, does your publisher have that already?
Jeri Westerson: That one’s done, and that will be probably available in May of 2026. A strange fellow comes to Badger and Watson, and he tells them that he needs Badger and Watson to come to his little country estate and convince the village that he’s not a vampire. Because they really think he is. He really looks like one, and he studies bats.
Blaine DeSantis: Okay.
Jeri Westerson: So he’s got a lot going background. And then, of course, it becomes a story that Badger and Watson can really sink their teeth into.
Blaine DeSantis: Yeah, sink. Literally. And have you started the next one?
Jeri Westerson: I have.
Blaine DeSantis: I figured.
Jeri Westerson: That’s The Magician’s Misadventure. Wow. So that’s about a stage magician who makes a big mistake on stage.
Blaine DeSantis: Well, that’s great. That’s great. I’m glad you had it. Because I talked to one gentleman I mentioned to you before. The name is [Could not verify with context]. And he writes a series also back in the Victorian era times. And he started out, he said, I planned for 20. He looked at whoever won. Maybe two. 20? Did you have a number maybe?
Jeri Westerson: That’s the Crispin Guest one, the medieval noir book. I had a timeline I was following of the reign of Richard II. So it had a specific ending. So I knew that one. And this one I just don’t. So let’s just go along with it.
Blaine DeSantis: You know what, friends? Jeri’s having a good time. You see her laughing? She’s having a good time. She does great historical research. She laughs. She chuckles. That’s part of the whole fun. I wish more people would be like that instead of so morose. But it’s been a lot of fun. Jeri, you have been a delight with us here on Books and Looks. I want to say thank you, thank you, thank you for joining us today and for writing these books because I find them absolutely fantastic. I’m going to keep getting them. So, again, thanks for being on Books and Looks.
Jeri Westerson: Well, thank you so much for having me. I had a good time.
Blaine DeSantis: Very good. Friends, we’ll be right back in a moment. Well, thanks so much, Jeri, for being on today’s show. Friends, if you enjoy Mysteries and the Victorian era London, Jeri’s Irregular Detective series is just for you. It’s a refreshing, unique look that her stories draw from Sherlock Holmes, but are not copycats. They’re drawn from the canon of Sherlock Holmes, which she’s explained. She has vibrant characters, quality plotting. I’ve read all three books in these series, and I think you will enjoy each and every one of these. So, another edition of Books and Looks is now in the books. And associating with our partners at BookTrib.com, I thank you for taking time from your busy schedules to make us part of your reading journey. I’ll be back next week with a new edition of Books and Looks.
