Elementary: Miss Taken Recap

Synopsis for 04×07: Someone wrote a heavily fictionalized novel about Joan and Sherlock, but that’s not their biggest issue as the remains of an FBI agent are found in a wood chipper and the team has to investigate to find the killer.

Rating: ★★★★☆

As if their lives weren’t interesting enough, Joan was tipped off to the fact that someone had written a heavily fictionalized novel about her and Sherlock’s lives. Of course, while the cases and characters were somewhat familiar, the events taking place in the book were over the top. Joan worried that Sherlock would be perturbed by the invasion of privacy, and she wanted to get down to the bottom of who wrote it. They had bigger issues to deal with first, though, as the body of an FBI agent was found in a wood chipper.

When they looked into the agent’s life they found that he had been investigating cold cases. Specifically, he’d been looking into the disappearance and subsequent reappearance of a young woman who had been kidnapped. She was captured as a child and years later resurfaced.

They went to interview the parents and the girl, in case they had information on the agent. Her parents told them that they were rather fond of the FBI agent and that he’d done a lot of good work trying to help reunite them with their daughter. They couldn’t believe he was dead, and had no idea who might have wanted to kill them.

Toward the end of the conversation the girl, Mina, appeared and wanted to know what was going on. Sherlock found her to be quite curious, because as everyone later found out, she wasn’t their daughter. She was an imposter. How did he know? From the shape of her ear, of course. They believed she was at the center of the whole case and that the FBI agent was killed because he found out about her, or had suspicions that she wasn’t the real Mina Davenport.

Joan, having realized who wrote the book about her and Sherlock, went to visit her step-dad. He was a writer, and admitted to writing it after having his editor on his butt about getting another book in. Since Joan and Sherlock made for an interesting story, he’d written about them and the case he’d witnessed them working on. She was upset with him about it.

Naturally, when they brought the parents in to try and tell them the news they refused to believe it. They separated them from Mina, who was brought with them. The Captain talked with them while Sherlock talked with the girl who put on one hell of a show. He even had to admit she was a fantastic liar.

However, her parents cut their little interview short when they stormed out of the precinct in a rage, offended that the police would dare suggest the girl that had been in their care wasn’t the daughter that had been taken from them. They showed her and themselves out of the precinct and the detectives were left wondering what to do next.

Joan brought up the book about them to Sherlock when they were back at the Brownstone, and he wasn’t surprised. Apparently he’d read it and everything. She wanted to know why he wasn’t upset, since he was so big on privacy, and he explained that the book hadn’t compromised their privacy. It was so fictionalized that it was nothing but a caricature of their lives, as opposed to the literal recounting of their cases that Joan had written about at one time. Joan was still angry about the book, and Sherlock wanted to know why but didn’t get a chance to get an answer because the woman pretending to be Mina Davenport showed up at the Brownstone.

She admitted that she wasn’t the real Mina Davenport, but that if they kept her secret a little bit longer she’d reach the point where she’d have access to Mina’s trust fund and would be out of their hair forever. If they agreed to stay quiet, she’d help them get the Davenports for the FBI agent’s murder. Sherlock agreed, but it turned out later didn’t actually believe her. He’d given her two packages which he insisted were both bugs, but they weren’t. One was a bug, so he couldn’t listen in, but the other was a flashbang that would get the family out of the house and give him and Joan a reason to get into it and investigate.

The book was brought up again and Joan admitted that she was angry about the book not because of the book itself, but because her step-father wrote it and she was still angry about him cheating on her mother years ago. It was at that point that their relationship had gone downhill and she missed being a part of his life. He showed up and offered her the manuscript for the second book he’d been working on, and admitted that he’d written the book because he missed her, too, and wanted a reason to be close to her again. However, he wasn’t going to publish another book if it was going to upset her and he wanted her to have everything he’d completed on it as a sign of good faith.

After searching the Davenport’s home they believed more than ever that the Mina-imposter was the one who killed the FBI agent, but her father quickly admitted to the crime himself. He would take the fall.

Sherlock was still insistent that the girl claiming to be Mina wasn’t, but the hair they found in her room appeared to be a match to Richard Davenport. She had to be their daughter. Yet Sherlock wasn’t convinced and dug into it more. Eventually, they were able to find the real Mina Davenport and everything fell into place.

The imposter had been able to pass as Mina because she knew Mina. She’d attacked Mina (after recognizing her) and shaved her head to get her hair so she could fake the necessary tests. When the FBI agent began to get suspicious about it, she killed him because she needed to last long enough in her con to access the money. They were able to track down the real Mina, too, and reunited her with her mother as they arrested the imposter.

Joan returned to her step-father and gave him back the manuscript, allowing him to go forward with the process. She even offered her comments and critiques on it. She wanted to try and leave the past behind them and rekindle their relationship instead of holding onto a grudge.

Sherlock went to visit the imposter in holding, where she seemed unbothered by the charges. They had no idea what her true identity was, or even how old she was. She toyed with Sherlock for a moment, before he just left her there. It left the audience with a feeling that he hadn’t seen the last of her.