To Sherlock Holmes she is always the woman. I have seldom heard him mention her under any other name. In his eyes she eclipses and predominates the whole of her sex.

—A Scandal in Bohemia

On May 6th, PBS Masterpiece unleashed Steven Moffat’s stylish update of A Scandal in Bohemia on the United States. I had seen the episode previously, but I watched again and live tweeted with fans, an interesting mix of those who were seeing it for the first time and those who were repeating the experience.

Almost immediately, I was struck by two things: 1) I still intensely dislike the direction Steven Moffat chose to take Irene’s character, and 2) The episode is so beautifully and cleverly written that I love it in spite of that.

When I decided to write a novel (The Detective and The Woman) about Sherlock Holmes, one of my primary desires, one I…