Monday, October 21, 2019

"Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula" by Loren D. Estleman

Hmm.  Well, I liked this well enough to finish the whole book.  And the last sixty pages or so really gripped me.  But overall, I'm afraid this book dragged and was more something I read just to get it off my TBR shelves than because I was enjoying it.

The story is exactly what it sounds like: a mash-up where Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson interact with the characters of Bram Stoker's Dracula and help rid England of the vampire.  

Maybe because I love vampire stories (even though I can't deal with any other kind of horror story), this fell kind of flat for me.  It was very much a re-hashing of Dracula, and we didn't get any new stuff added to that book, really, until those last sixty pages.  That it was new and cool, and I dug it.

Also, Dr. Watson came off as a blundering fool too often for my taste.  It was like this was based more on the Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce movies than on the canon itself, and I objected to that.

Particularly Good Bits:

To be forced to stand by helplessly and watch one's entire world rushing headlong towards calamity is a descent into deepest Hell (p. 157).

Outside the window, the first snowflakes of winter were enjoying a brief moment of glory before being trod into an unrecognisable slush beneath the traffic upon the street (p. 181).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for some scary vampire stuff.


This is my 11th book read and reviewed for the Mount TBR Reading Challenge.

4 comments:

  1. I think I read this once... a long, long time ago, but overall I liked the book where Sherlock Holmes meets the Phantom of the Opera better. ;)

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    Replies
    1. Charity, yeah, I would really like to read the POTO one just because Lereaux was a big Doyle fan, and there's speculation that one character (IIRC, the Ratcatcher) was actually Holmes in disguise, so I'd like to see what they do with that.

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  2. Hate that Watson is undervalued, but still kinda want to read it.

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    Replies
    1. Skye, he does shine toward the end, which is why I liked the ending a lot.

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