"Sherlock Holmes: The Montana Chronicles" by John S. Fitzpatrick

This was an enjoyable collection of short stories about Holmes and Watson having four adventures in Montana in the 1890s.  While I didn't fully love any of the stories, I did have fun reading them, especially since I took this book along on vacation and read it while in Montana!

Of the four stories, I liked "The Mysterious Woman" best because it felt most like a story from the canon, with Holmes uncovering the reason behind a woman's sudden and inexplicable behavioral changes.  

The places and many of the people in this book are historically accurate, which was nifty.  The book contains lots of photos of locations from around the time the stories take place.  However, the writing sometimes dragged because the author often hared off on tangents about how various bits of mining machinery and apparatus operated.  Where one paragraph would have sufficed, we got a page or two, and so on.  Great if you're fascinated by 1890s mining methods in Montana, I suppose, but I eventually began to skim them.

Also, the author repeatedly portrays Holmes as using cocaine to keep alert while on a stakeout, and I am pretty sure (though I admit it has been a few years since I read the whole canon) that he canonically only uses cocaine when he is between cases and suffering from extreme ennui, never while on a case.  That bugged me.

So... it was a fun read, but not one I'll be rereading.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for some mentions of husbandly "urges," some alcohol and drug use, and some violence.

This is my 33rd book read off my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2023.

"Castle Shade" by Laurie R. King

Well, what do you know?  I greatly liked two of Laurie R. King's Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes books in a row!  I very much enjoyed Riviera Gold last year, and I also had a jolly time reading Castle Shade!  That makes me quite happy :-)

Castle Shade picks right up where Riviera Gold left off, with Russell and Holmes on a train heading to Transylvania.  Someone is creating creepy and weird problems for Queen Marie of Roumania, the kinds of problems that make you think of vampires and witches and ancient curses.  Which, Russell and Holmes are convinced, all have very human sources and motivations.

Part of what I liked so much about this book was how escapist it was.  Nothing so suspenseful that I got stressed out on behalf of the characters.  The mystery is solid and entertaining, but even in the most exciting parts, I could read serenely on, confident that all would turn out well in the end.  And I really loved that.

Particularly Good Bits:

In some fairy tales, happily ever after is where things end.

In others, happiness is where the problems begin (p. 29).

I looked at my husband.  "Do you plan on indulging your flair for the dramatic throughout our time here?"

"I expect so," he said complacently (p. 45).  (This part made me stop reading and laugh aloud with delight.)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for allusions to historical instances of people bathing in blood, impaling their enemies, and characters wondering if a sexual assault has taken place.  It hadn't, but it does get discussed.

"The Canary Trainer" by Nicholas Meyer

For years, I have wanted to read a book that inserts Sherlock Holmes into The Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux.  Why?  Because the edition of that book I first read, way back in 1999, mentioned that some people suggest that the "Rat Catcher" character might actually be Sherlock Holmes in disguise.  I have since learned that Leroux was actually a HUGE fan of Sherlock Holmes, and it's very possible that he meant the Rat Catcher to be Holmes in disguise.  

Well, what Holmesian wouldn't want to read a version of it where that's really Holmes?

So, I was excited to learn that Nicholas Meyer had written a book that mashed the two together.  I've long been a fan of Meyer's book The Seven-Per-Cent Solution and hoped he would do the story justice.  And, for the most part, he did.  Holmes was very Holmes-esque, I like that Irene Adler got to play a part that didn't involve her trying to seduce Holmes (because I'm tired of pastiches that use her that way), and I liked seeing the events of The Phantom of the Opera from a different perspective.

But Holmes isn't the Rat Catcher.  In fact, the Rat Catcher never shows up at all.  I mean, I guess you could say Holmes kind of steps in to take his place in a way?  But... it wasn't how I was hoping, so... I will have to reread this sometime without my expectations in the way, and I think I will be even more pleased with it then.  Which doesn't mean I didn't like it now, because I did!  A lot.  Enough to keep it on my shelves.

Particularly Good Bits:

It is often so with human nature; we take for granted and disparage our greatest gifts and years to be accepted in capacities for which others might be better suited.  Clowns long to enact Hamlet, doctors to write novels, and in my case here was a detective determined to play the violin (p. 46).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some mild innuendo, peril to many characters, and several fairly creepy scenes, as befits anything about the Phantom of the Opera.

This is my 17th book read from my TBR shelves for #TheUnreadShelfProject2021.

"Yuletide: A Jane Austen-Inspired Collection of Stories" edited by Christina Boyd

This was a diverting collection of short Christmas stories.  They all center around Pride and Prejudice, which I didn't realize at first -- I thought there would be a mix of all of Austen's novels, but nope, all P&P.  Some of the stories retold Pride and Prejudice in a modern setting.  Others were a Christmasy sequel to the book.  Still others wrote an alternate version of the book where Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Darcy fell in love in a different way from the original.  Many of the stories were good, a couple were great, and some were only okay.

My favorites were, in order of how they appear in the book:

"The Forfeit" by Caitlin Williams -- Mr. Darcy is stranded near Meryton at Christmas and must spend the holiday with the Bennet family while waiting for the weather to clear.  During the festivities, he and Elizabeth spend a great deal of time together, much to their mutual satisfaction.  (An alternate ending for P&P)

"By a Lady" by Lona Manning -- Elizabeth Darcy endeavors to make friends with her husband's cousin, Anne, and they discover a mutual interest in books.  (A sequel to P&P)

"The Season for Friendly Greetings" by Anngela Schroeder -- Lizzy and Jane Bennet attend a ball and get to know Col. Fitzwilliam and learn the truth about a mutual acquaintance, Mr. Wickham, thus learning to understand and appreciate another mutual acquaintance, Mr. Darcy.  (An alternate ending for P&P)

(From my Instagram)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG for some stories and PG-13 for others.  The modern-set ones are more PG-13 and the Regency ones are more PG.

This is my third book read and reviewed for the Literary Christmas Reading Link-Up hosted by In the Bookcase and my 50th for #TheUnreadShelfProject2020

"Mr. Rochester" by Sarah Shoemaker

Head canon accepted.

Seriously.  This is so exactly what I wanted from a book about Mr. Rochester, the Byronic, enigmatic love interest from Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte.  Which happens to be my favorite book.  It fills in gaps, explains little quirks and questions, and fleshes out even more fully the man who loves my favorite literary heroine.

(This contains spoilers for this book as well as for Jane Eyre.  You've been warned.)

This book starts when Edward Fairfax Rochester is just a boy, rattling around Thornfield Hall, lonely and wishing for notice or affection from his older brother Rowland and their father.  It traces his youth at an unusual boarding school, his growth toward manhood while learning to manage a business, and then his disastrous trip to Jamaica.  It's there that he's swept up into a whirlwind courtship of the stunning Bertha Mason, married to her almost before he's aware of what he's doing, and then gradually overwhelmed by her growing madness.

Shoemaker beautifully explains things like why Mr. Rochester would bring his mad wife to England, why he would keep her in his own home, why he insists that Jane call him Edward even though everyone else calls him Fairfax Rochester.  She even softens his attempted bigamy in a way I hadn't expected, giving him a possible way out of his marriage to Bertha (which does not quite come to pass after all) that prompts him to propose to Jane.  That also involved a twist I wasn't expecting, but that definitely worked with the original book.

I also liked that it showed by Mr. Rochester was not fond of his ward Adele, even to the point of rudeness at times.  In this book, she is most decidedly shown not to be his daughter, rather having him decide to become her protector after her mother died so that Adele would not be turned into a child prostitute.

If you like books showing another person's point of view of events in a well-known, well-loved story, and especially if you love Jane Eyre, this book will probably delight you too.  Be aware that this IS a book for adults, however, as I will detail below.

Particularly Good Bits:

"That settles it!" Miss Kent interrupted.  "Music and reading!  What better way to spend an evening" (p. 107-08).

I shall say this for her: certainly, unlike some women, her view of marriage was not dictated by the fanciful romantic vision of a Jane Austen novel (p. 407).  (This made me laugh because Bronte was not an Austen fan.  I happen to think Austen has a particularly clear-eyed view of marriage, more than Rochester himself, but still, made me chuckle.)

If This Was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  R.  It has numerous discussions of people having sex, though it is not explicit.  It deals with slavery and the fact that some slave owners would force themselves on their female slaves.  It also has two instances of the F-word and some other bad language.  And the descriptions of madness, of mad houses, and of the usual treatment of mad people at that time are a bit hard to take at times.  There is also mention of teenage pregnancy and children born out of wedlock.

"Mycroft and Sherlock: The Empty Birdcage" by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse

Um, so I've read the third book now too.  This is so unlike me.  I've read all the books (so far) in this series in like two months.  Usually, I can stretch a good series for YEARS!  Or, if there are only three books, at least for six months.  But... the library had this on the shelf, so I got it.

I still like Mycroft and Sherlock best of the three, but I did like this one better than Mycroft Holmes.

Sherlock Holmes decides he's done with school because he'd rather track down a serial killer.  He leaves his university and, with a little aid from his brother, sets off on his first manhunt.

Meanwhile, Mycroft is trying to find the missing fiance of the girl Mycroft fell in love with in a previous book.  The two cases are tangentially related, but not tied together in an all-too-neat knot by the end, and I appreciated that.  

I'm really hoping this series continues, because I'm enjoying it so much!  

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for murder, suicide, violence, kidnapping, and so on.  Once again, no cussing or smut.  Remarkably clean for a  modern murder mystery!

"Mycroft Holmes" by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse

Why yes, I'm on a Sherlock Holmes kick.  Why do you ask?  :-D

I enjoyed Mycroft and Sherlock so very much that I got the first book in the series from the library as fast as I could.  And now that I'm done with it, I'll see if I can get the third one.

I didn't like this one quite as much as Mycroft and Sherlock, and that's mostly because Sherlock Holmes was barely in it.  Now, the Mycroft in these books is very engaging and sympathetic and interesting... but my heart belongs to his brother, and that's that.

Also, Mycroft in this book ends up morphing into kind of an Allan Quatermain-like person, engaging in fights and action sequences and all kinds of escapades in an exotic location.  Which was fun, but... I missed London.

So what happens is, Mycroft follows his fiancee Georgiana to Trinidad, bringing along his friend Cyrus Douglas, because that's where Douglas and Georgiana are both from, though she's white, the daughter of a wealthy planter, and he's black.  Georgiana begs Mycroft not to come because there's been creepy trouble back in Trinidad, with children dying and rumors of evil spirits and so on.  Which is precisely why Mycroft and Douglas want to go there.

A few poisonings, beatings, and violent fights later, and Mycroft begins trying his hand at detective work.  He and Douglas uncover an evil plot and the implications that Georgiana is not who she says she is.  By the time Mycroft returns to London, he's a very different person than the confident, smug, complacent young government worker he'd been when he left.  Also, he acquired muscles, which get mentioned once too often for my taste.

So anyway, this was darker than the second book in the series, and it lacked Sherlock in all but the very beginning and very end, and so... I liked it, but didn't love it.  But I still want to read the third book by Abdul-Jabbar and Waterhouse, 

I learned something neat and unexpected from both these books, though.  From the bio at the end, anyway ;-)  Kareem Abdul-Jabbar graduated with a degree in English and History from UCLA.  I graduated with minors in English and History!  Who knew I had a little bit of something in common with a famous basketball player who is 19 inches taller than I am?  According to his bio, he's been a Sherlock Holmes fan for many years (me too!) and has written/co-written like nine or ten other books besides these Mycroft books.  Who knew?  I didn't!

(From my Instagram)

Particularly Good Bits:

Holmes resembled their mother, with her strange grey eyes and spun gold hair, whereas Sherlock took after their father, all dark lines and angles, as if he were a Gothic building that, while handsome enough, had a few joints out of alignment (p. 75).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for violence and some mild cussing.  No smut.

"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.

"Mycroft and Sherlock" by Kareem Abdul-Jabbar and Anna Waterhouse

What kind of week have you had?  I've had the kind where I finished this book last weekend, but haven't had a minute to review it until now.  As in, we had to go somewhere and do something every single day.  Sigh.  I'm an introvert AND a homebody, and I just... am tired!

Happily, this coming week has only one day where I have to go somewhere at a specific time.  Whew.  I'm so relieved.

Even more happily, this book is AWESOME.  As in, best Sherlock Holmes pastiche I've read in a long time by someone other than Laurie R. King.  I'm kinda picky about my Sherlock Holmes portrayals (okay, VERY picky about them), but this one pleased me so much!  It focuses more on Mycroft than Sherlock and is definitely the most relatable portrayal I've seen of the elder Holmes brother in basically forever. 

I was a little worried about Sherlock himself at first because he's very young here, still a university student, and I thought at first he had too much, um... emotional fervor, maybe?  A little too reckless?  Too moody?  Too much like the Benedict Cumberbatch version and too little like the Holmes of the canon?  (Don't get me wrong -- I love BC as Sherlock, but he's not the Holmes of the canon, and this is supposed to be.)  But as I read on, I could see how the authors were contrasting that with who he would eventually become with who he is as a young adult, how things he experiences at this point help mold and shape him into the mature Holmes we meet in Doyle's stories.  By the middle of the book, I was fully accepting of this portrayal, especially as we spent more time in Sherlock's point of view.

(From my Instagram account.)

One of the things I liked best about this book was how CLEAN it is!  There are zero cusswords.  There's no sex.  There are quite a few mentions of violent crimes, some of them extreme, but we don't get detailed accounts of how that violence occurs, we see its aftermath or hear someone's remembrance of it.  The violence we do see is street-fights and things of that sort.  The plot centers around a series of corpses that have been cut into four parts and mutilated, but they don't go into great detail about them, just say which body parts were cut off, using phrases that Victorian gentlemen would use, if that makes sense?  It never seemed icky or gratuitous to me.

But there's a lot of talk about drug use, about how opium and its derivatives are totally legal at that time, very common, and how they can destroy people's lives.  The murders are linked to the opium trade, and there's a lot of discussion about the drugs and about characters in the story who have used them, including children.  I learned some really interesting historical things from this, and it was intriguing from a Sherlockian perspective since we know that by the time of the canonical stories, he was using cocaine recreationally, though Dr. Watson did eventually help him overcome that habit.  But here we already see the seeds planted for how he would be able to encounter and acquire the drug, as well as why it was kind of treated as not a huge deal within the canon.

Anyway, I picked this up on a whim at an airport bookstore and ended up liking it so very much that I'm excited that it's actually part of a series!  This is book two, and I've put in a request at my library for the first book.  They have the third one too.  I hope they're as good as this one!  If you're a Holmesian, definitely give these a try.

Particularly Good Bits:

The poor seemed to be not so much gathered under its eaves and upon its stoops as cast off like crumbs from a stale loaf (p. 184).

"Perhaps you might practice, instead of sullen stubbornness, a certain detached amusement," Douglas went on.  "The two perspectives are related, in that they both think less of other human beings than might be warranted.  But, whereas detached amusement is tolerable, sullen stubbornness is not.  Oh, people will still find you arrogant, but they will not be quite so insulted from the start, and some might even be strangely charmed" (p. 252).

...since trying to find Sherlock when he did not wish to be found was a fool's errand, Mycroft preferred to be alone in playing the fool (p. 371).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: PG-13 for the aforementioned drug use and violence.  No cussing, no smut.

"Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Holmes" by Loren D. Estleman

Yes, you read that title correctly.  This book puts Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson into the world of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson.  I picked this book up a couple of years ago when I was teaching my niece literature.  We read both The Hound of the Baskervilles and The Strange Case... that fall, and she said she wished someone would write a story where Holmes solved the case.  I said I bet someone had, and lo and behold, I was right.  I found a copy of it, but never got around to reading it until now.

As Holmes pastiches go, this one isn't bad!  I didn't love it, but I enjoyed it.  I think I'll send it to my niece, because she might enjoy it more.  

Estleman's characterizations of Holmes and Watson are faithful to the canon, if a little bit... fanfic-y at times.  Like, using soooo many of their mannerisms and their phraseology and going to great lengths to describe their flat accurately and cram lots of canon characters into it.  We don't gain any new understanding of Holmes or Watson... but that's not terrible.  It was a fun book to read, right when I needed something fun and light, so I did enjoy it.

I find it weird, though, that the cover art inset of half Jekyll, half Hyde looks sooooooo much like Thomas Edison.

(Bookstagrammer!)

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for violence and dangerous situations.  No cussing or "adult" content.

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

"Marilla of Green Gables" by Sarah McCoy

Today is Lucy Maud Montgomery's birthday!  To celebrate, I'm reviewing a book that's based on her Anne of Green Gables series, Marilla of Green Gables by Sarah McCoy.  As you would expect, this is a prequel to the Anne books, creating a deeper backstory for Marilla and Matthew Cuthbert than is provided in Anne's stories.

I really liked the first two-thirds of this book.  Reading the imaginings about Marilla's life as a quiet, reserved girl who knows loss at a young age, who makes friends with the extroverted Rachel White, and who gradually falls in love with John Blythe was just a joy.  The last third was less delightful for me, and I'm not sure if that's because it was sadder (I don't think I need to say "spoiler alert" about the fact that she does NOT marry John Blythe) or because it got sort of exciting and suspenseful all of a sudden, and the tone didn't quite fit the rest of the book.  So I'm kind of adopting the first two-thirds into my personal head-canon for the Anne universe, and the last third I'll just... gradually forget.

This book is beautifully written, and I do recommend it to fans of the Anne books.  There are a lot of sweet little nuances, moments where you can say, "Oh, THIS is why she's so attached to that amythest brooch!" or "Aww, no wonder she encouraged Anne to go make friends with Diana -- she knows what it is to need a friend."  Also, the Pyes and the Blythes and the Andrewses and so many other familiar names appear, which was charming and fun.

(Mine from Instagram)

Particularly Good Bits:


"I like doing," said Marilla (p. 22).

"Greatness can be found anywhere.  It doesn't need grandeur.  There's greatness in the ordinary.  Maybe even more than elsewhere" (p. 34).

She was just as she was.  It didn't bother her to be plain (p. 56).

Marilla frowned.  His words rang of fatalism, and despite her no-nonsense nature, she was covertly a hopeful spirit (p. 161).

Silence had always been a Cuthbert comfort (p. 191).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  a soft PG-13 for discussions of death in childbirth, a few minor curse words, a suspenseful part involving men with guns, and some kissing scenes.

"Island of the Mad" by Laurie R. King

You know I've been a fan of Laurie R. King's Mary Russell & Sherlock Holmes series for many years now.  I've written a lot of posts about them.  They're my favorite non-canonical Holmes stories, and I love some of them dearly.

Just not this one.

Actually, I liked much of the story.  It was fascinating, mysterious, and held some nice twists.  Russell's university friend Veronica's aunt has been in and out of mental institutions for the last decade or so, and then she suddenly disappears, so Veronica asks Russell to look for her aunt.  Russell and Holmes follow her trail to Venice, which has just come under the rule of Mussolini and the fascists, and all the historical details were awesome.  They end up rubbing elbows with people like Cole Porter, so that was fun.

But running all through the story is a vein of homosexuality, which is not surprising given that King's modern-day mystery series stars a gay policewoman and she's dealt with the topic in other books too.  And Cole Porter actually was gay, so it all tied together.  What bothered me was Russell and Holmes' very modern reactions to finding out various people involved in the case were, as the parlance of the day put it, lavender.  They were practically ho-hum, and while many people in the 21st century would react that way, it felt pretty weird for the time and place the book was set.  Yes, Russell and Holmes have always been unconventional characters, but this began to feel like the foisting of an author's agenda into her characters' behavior and words that I just didn't appreciate or enjoy.  It was like if Holmes and Russell had suddenly started talking about reducing emissions and saving the ozone layer and needing to find sustainable fuel -- it just didn't seem to fit.

So anyway, if you like the series, you'll still have fun hanging out with Holmes and Russell here.  But this won't be a favorite of mine.  A couple years ago, I made a list of how I rank the books in this series, from favorite to least-favorite, and I feel like revising the list to include the newer books, so here's how I rank them now:

1. The Beekeeper's Apprentice (book 1)
2. The Game (book 7)
3. The Murder of Mary Russell (book 14)
4. O Jerusalem (book 5)
5. Garment of Shadows (book 12)
6. Pirate King (book 11)
7. Locked Rooms (book 8)
8. Dreaming Spies (book 13)
9. Justice Hall (book 6)
10. The God of the Hive (book 10)
11. The Language of Bees (book 9)
12. The Moor (book 4)
13. Island of the Mad (book 15)
14. A Monstrous Regiment of Women (book 2)
15. A Letter of Mary (book 3)

Particularly Good Bits:

"I have never found 'luck' a dependable companion," Holmes noted calmly, and tucked into his soup (p. 237).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It: a hard PG-13 or soft R for a lot of veiled discussions of sexual proclivities, the behavior of mentally disturbed people, bad language, and some perilous situations.

"The Case of the Missing Marquess" by Nancy Springer

Eva from Coffee, Classics, and Craziness recommended this series to me because she knows I love Sherlock Holmes and good middle-grade fiction.  Thanks, Eva!  This was a fun, fast read.

Enola Holmes is the much, much, much younger sister of Sherlock and Mycroft Holmes.  While they're off pursuing their adult lives in London, she's growing up footloose and free in the country.  Or she was.  Their mother disappears on Enola's fourteenth birthday, and none of the Holmes siblings can figure out where she's gone.

Sherlock and Mycroft are appalled at the non-ladylike behavior of their little sister and determine to send her to boarding school so she can have a proper upbringing.  Enola has been taught to fear things like corsets and male authority by her proto-feminist mother, and she runs away, determined to find her missing parent.  Instead, she gets tangled up in the mystery of a runaway aristocrat and succeeds where her famous brothers fail.

The idea of Sherlock Holmes having a younger sister amused me greatly, and I really liked Enola as a character.  I didn't enjoy the almost militant feminist overtones quite so much, and the book as a whole fell just a little into the trap of "let's make our detective look smarter by making everyone else kind of dim" that a lot of Holmes pastiches get snared in.  However, I'm pretty sure I'll try another book in the series to see if I like it better.

Particularly Good Bits:

Lead-coloured clouds hung low while the setting sun oozed molten light between them; the Gothic towers of the city stood festive yet foreboding against that glowering sky, like candles on the Devil's birthday cake (p. 141).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for repeated mentions of ladies-of-the-evening and fairly delicate allusions to how they make their living.  That's why I'd call this "middle-grade fiction" and not "junior fiction."  No bad language or other objectionable material, though.

This is my 9th book read and reviewed for the Adventure of Reading Challenge 2017.

"The Trials of Sherlock Holmes" by James Moffett

When I found out that James Moffett of the wonderful blog A Tolkienist's Perspective was also a fan of Sherlock Holmes, I was pretty excited.  You may remember that I very much enjoyed participating in his read-along of The Silmarillion, and I continue to appreciate his insights into Tolkien.  I've also enjoyed his new Holmes-related blog, A Palace for the Mind. 

So I was eager to read James Moffett's own foray into Sherlock Holmes pastiche.  And I'm happy to say that the mysteries here are more twisty than any I could ever come up with.  They also all tie together into one unified puzzle pretty nicely.  

If you are a fan of the BBC series Sherlock, you will probably like this.  It's got the Victorian London setting of the canonical stories, but I found the characterizations to be very much informed by the BBC show.  The Holmes in this book is "cheeky" (p. 119) and "mischievous" (p. 145), and other anachronisms such as a kitchen in the 221B apartment also seem derived from the show rather than the book.  

In the end, I found this book a fun way to pass the time.  Just right for a little light summer reading.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for various dangerous situations.  No bad language, no adult situations, nothing gruesome.

"Becoming Holmes" by Shane Peacock

I'm a bit irked with this book, I'm afraid.  I started reading this series three years ago because the title of this, the final book, sounded so enticing.  I worked my way through them slowly, because there were only six books in the series, and I didn't want them to get to this one too quickly.  I liked the series better and better as it progressed, and so I'm afraid I set myself up for a bit of a let-down, as I did have pretty high expectations for Becoming Holmes.  

It's not that this is a bad book.  I felt like it meandered a bit in the middle before figuring out where it was going, but that didn't bug me much.  I did greatly dislike one thing, though, a thing I found terribly out of character, and I'm going to say it here and it's going to be spoily, so if you are thinking of reading this book or series and don't want spoilage, just skip to the next paragraph and you'll be fine.  The thing I disliked was that Sherlock Holmes deliberately killed a villain, then lied about it, pinned it on another villain, and was not particularly bothered by this behavior.  And while the canon Holmes does sometimes take the law into his own hands, it is never in this lying, conniving way.  This felt beneath him.  Understandable for the character Peacock has written, but, in the end, not for someone who is becoming Sherlock Holmes.

Up until the final chapter, when the above was revealed, I was not enchanted with this book, but I wasn't irked with it the way I am now.  Now I'm pursing my lips and glaring at it out of the corners of my narrowed eyes, and that's just not how I wanted to feel about this book.

Still, the series as a whole has been entertaining and inventive.  I'm glad I've read them, but I don't think I'll ever feel the urge to reread them.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for disturbing images, violence, death, and some creepiness.  

"The Dragon Turn" by Shane Peacock

Like the other books in this series, The Dragon Turn finds an adolescent Sherlock Holmes attempting to solve a mystery that baffles authorities.  Unlike most "kid power" books and movies where the kids are smart and the adults are bumbling fools, the mystery here baffles Sherlock just as much as his counterparts at Scotland Yard.  I very much appreciated that, as even when I was a kid myself, I thought "kid power" stories were sometimes fun, but always unrealistic.

As for the plot, there's this mediocre magician with a fantastic new trick involving a dragon.  All of London is going nuts about him.  Then he's accused of murdering a rival magician, the very one who ran away with the first guy's wife a few years ago.  The police are convinced the first guy murdered the second guy, but all that was left at the crime scene was blood and some bits of flesh.  They have no idea how the murder was done, and Sherlock tries to figure it out for them.

Particularly Good Bits: 

Boredom is like a monster to Sherlock Holmes, like a troll hiding beneath a bridge, waiting to attack him (p. 18).

"If a sword of justice is needed," he says, even louder, not caring who hears, "...then I shall be it!" (p. 220).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for violence and intense situations.  There's no black magic involved here -- just sleight-of-hand and stage tricks.

"The Murder of Mary Russell" by Laurie R. King

You may recall that I was so excited/concerned/thrilled/worried about the title of the latest novel of suspense featuring Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes that I actually posted about it last year when King revealed the title and cover art.  Well, it finally came in for me at the library, and I devoured this book in two days.  One night, I stayed up until almost midnight reading it, without realizing how time was flying.  I finished it the next day.  Although I've only read it once so far, I thiiiiiink this might be my second-favorite book in this series, edging out The Game.  

Much of the book is a flashback of sorts detailing the history of Mrs. Hudson.  Yes, Sherlock Holmes' landlady from Baker Street, now his housekeeper in Sussex.  King has created an inventive, dark, and surprisingly believable backstory for Mrs. Hudson, basing it on the fact that there's a man named Hudson in the canon story "The Adventure of the Gloria Scott."  In King's hands, he is revealed to be Mrs. Hudson's father, and you know, I just don't feel like spoiling this story too much because I would have been really mad if I'd known much more than that myself going in.

Well, except I'll tell you this:  the story revolves around con artistry.  And I am perilously fond of confidence men, grifters, matchstick men, hustlers, and flimflammers.  Which is why this book drew me in so quickly and deeply.  Sherlock Holmes and Mary Russell kind of float on the periphery of this one for a long time, very intensely tied to the plot, but at the same time staying a bit in the background for 200 pages.  Holmes gets page time in the flashbacks too, a young Holmes working his first case, which is charming.  But I wasn't bothered by their absence because the story King wove around Mrs. Hudson was so compelling.

Particularly Good Bits:

"The smiling countryside," he said bitterly.  "Its potential for sin has always filled me with horror.  Now I have added to its lonely secrets" (p. 172).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  R for more scenes of sensuality than are typical of this series, and also violence and some language.

"Archie Meets Nero Wolfe" by Robert Goldsborough

Does it ever happen to you that you're in the middle of a book (or four), and then another book arrives at your house, and you're like, "Oh, I'll just read the first page to see what it's like, and then I'll read the rest after I finish the book (or four) I'm working on right now."  And two days later, you've finished the whole new book.

Well, that's what happened to me with Archie Meets Nero Wolfe, which bears the entirely unneeded subtitle A Prequel to Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe Mysteries.  I mean, what else could it possibly be?

You know by now that I love Rex Stout's Nero Wolfe mysteries.  They're one of my happy places.  I've never read a Wolfe pastiche before, though, and I was a leeetle nervous going into this.  I've read enough Sherlock Holmes and Jane Austen pastiches to know that sometimes you find someone golden who can write those characters they way they ought to be written, but most of the time you get all miserable because it's sort of bad fanfiction written by someone with a tin ear.

Happily, Goldsborough is good.  His pacing is sound, and he plots well.  His dialog for Wolfe was excellent -- I could really feel like yes, this was Wolfe.  Same for Inspector Cramer.  The 'teers, Saul and Fred and Orrie, were good too.  But of course, the quality of any Nero Wolfe pastiche is going to hinge on the portrayal of Archie Goodwin.  He's the narrator of the originals, the real heart of the stories, and by far my favorite character in them.  Archie is make or break.

And here too, Goldsborough made it work.  Not quite so perfectly as Wolfe -- it wasn't until the last third of the story that I really started feel like yup, this is my Archie Goodwin.  But that's actually okay, and may have been intentional, because the book begins with Archie at 19, freshly arrived in NYC and trying to find his niche in the big city.  He's still zesty and charming, but feels a little unformed, and I've decided that Goldsborough did that on purpose, because Archie at 19 obviously wouldn't have yet acquired the flair he has as a grown man.  It's by hanging out with Saul Panzer and Nero Wolfe that he can learn to be more than just brash and brave.  

After I'd finished reading this, I did a little internet sleuthing of my own and discovered that Goldsborough had previously written several Nero Wolfe mysteries, so I'm kind of thinking I'll try to find some of those now too.  Not like I've run out of actual Nero Wolfe books, because I have half a shelf of them I haven't read yet, but... the more, the merrier, huh?

The actual plot of Archie Meets Nero Wolfe revolves around a kidnapping case that Wolfe solves with the help of his go-to independent operatives, Saul Panzer, Fred Durkin, and Orrie Cather, as well as someone who pops up in a couple of the originals, Del Bascom.  And Del Bascom brings along a bright young fellow he's taken on as an assistant, one Archie Goodwin.  By the end of the book, Wolfe has come to appreciate Goodwin's detecting instincts, ability to recall entire conversations verbatim, and energetic inability to sit around and do nothing.  He offers him the job of assistant, warning him he'll need to be part secretary, part clue hound, and part pants-kicker.  And, well... we all know how that turns out.

Particularly Good Bits:

"False humility is a transparent plea for praise and recognition, neither of which I find worth the price of the pretense" (p. 138).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG for some violence, a child in peril, and a little bad language here and there (the same kind you'd run into in the original books).  

"The Secret Fiend" by Shane Peacock

This is the 4th book in Peacock's Boy Sherlock Holmes series.  It involves people dressing up like the Spring-Heeled Jack, a character from "penny dreadful" stories of the day who wears a black-and-green wings-like cape, has a frightening appearance, and breathes blue fire.  It attacks people, mainly women, and shouts dire warnings about chaos.  

I was actually a little annoyed with this book because Sherlock doubted his own abilities so often, and misidentified the Spring-Heeled Jack so often that it got repetitive and felt a like the author was stretching his story out to fill pages.  The previous 3 books didn't feel that way, though, so I'm not giving up on the series.  And the last chapter made up for any annoyance, with young Sherlock having a chance encounter with the great British statesman Benjamin Disraeli, who counsels him thus:

"Human beings are not God.  We were cast out from the Garden of Eden when we tried to be.  We are all imperfect, but if we are wise, we learn every day" (p. 243).

I LOVED that.  Because I agree with it wholeheartedly, and I found it refreshing in a book written in modern times, when so many spout humanistic ideas of man's inner goodness and innocence, etc.  Also, coincidentally, the Sherlock Holmes bookmark I was using for this book had a line from "The Man with the Twisted Lip" on it:  "It is better to learn wisdom late than never to learn it at all."  I thought that went superbly well with the above quotation.

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for violence, scary and intense scenes, and some mildly suggestive material.

"The Pursuit of Mary Bennet" by Pamela Mingle

Sigh.  It's entirely possible that this book suffered from me reading it right after reading two AMAZING books, Dear Enemy by Jean Webster and The Blue Castle by L. M. Montgomery.  However, I think that even if I hadn't just gloried in those two, I would still have found this book disappointing. 

This, obviously, is a Pride and Prejudice pastiche.  I have always pitied Mary Bennet, younger sister of Jane and Elizabeth, because she's socially awkward and doesn't fit in with the rest of her family.  So I was pretty excited to read a book about her getting her own happy ending.  And she does.  She falls in love with a man who returns her affections, and by the end, they are engaged to be married.  However, for the bulk of the book, Mary continually convinces herself that this man, Henry Walsh, could never love her because she was boring, unfashionable, plain, etc.  This grows tiresome.  Also, she becomes unhealthily attached to Lydia's new baby daughter for a while, which while believable, was uncomfortable to read about.  

Is this a bad book?  No.  But I didn't like it very well, alas.  My copy will very likely wind up in next year's Great Book Giveaway Bonanza, in hopes that someone else may enjoy it more than I did!

Particularly Good Bits:

Since Mr. Darcy married Lizzy, his manners in company had become easier, but he remained a formidable man.  Not a man to be denied (p. 52).

If This was a Movie, I Would Rate It:  PG-13 for discussions of birth, mild sexual matter, and a few old-fashioned curse words.