Where Watson Wishes Sherlock Was a Little More Forthcoming

The Scroll of the Dead by David Stuart Davies
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a pretty straight-forward Sherlock Holmes novel (in the "Further Adventures of..." series), and if you're like me, that's just about what you want. Not a classic, I suppose, but plenty of fun to read for a Sherlock Holmes fan.

Plot: various people are looking for an ancient Egyptian document that supposedly has the key to eternal life, and they are willing to kill to obtain it. Also, a famous archaeologist (the type who knows about ancient Egypt and its documents) has gone missing, and he is assumed to be kidnapped.

It works. Sherlock, doing his thing. Watson working with him. Guns. Secret ceremonies. Train travel. Strange people living in isolated homes full of secrets. It's all the good stuff.

Another key: in addition to crafting a good mystery, David Stuart Davies is excellent at writing in the tone and style of the original stories. If Sherlock Holmes is a comfort read for you the way he is for me, this should be just the thing. Recommended.

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Where Various Sherlocks Pursue the Truth

alt.sherlock.holmes: New Visions of the Great Detective by Gini Koch
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I generally love Sherlock Holmes. I go for original stories as well as modern novels based on them, and I also enjoy the movies, the many TV incarnations, the various graphic novels, and the many series that are reinventions (with Sherlock as a woman, or Sherlock as a descendent of the OG Sherlock, or Sherlock as a wizard...) Not *all* of these have worked for me, but I'd say 95% have. This book also sounded like I'd love it, which is what I figured when I got it signed at Phoenix Comicon some time ago, but it ended up, for me, in that small number of misses. Or near miss--3 stars is okay.

Parts of it entertained. And I'm convinced a lot of readers would enjoy this way more than I did. Really, the novellas in this collection are kinda literary-coded. However, that just isn't my thing.

TBH, these all would work better as stories unrelated to Sherlock. The characters in the Depression-era circus were cool and the setting was very real. The investigator in the reality TV story (a female Sherlock who could have been any capable detective) was fine. The 60s gay rights and Black Panther story has a reason to exist on its own. Any of these could be a decent story as a complete original. But for my money, Sherlock was just shoehorned into them. It's a bad fit. He seldom acts like Sherlock or spends much time doing the normal things Sherlock is supposed to do in an investigation. Most of the attention is on the unique framing, the new setting. It all gives about 20% Sherlock, 80% something else entirely, and I didn't love it.

Don't get me wrong--most of the writing is excellent. I'm gonna look up some other things by the authors here, because I might connect with other things a little better. And I supported the themes and (as Dan McClellan would say) the rhetorical goals of these creators, because it was all broad-minded, anti-racist, pro-diversity messaging. I'm right there with you. I want these stories to find their audience--but I didn't enjoy reading it very much.

In brief: lots of great vibes but uninspired detective work. Recommended mostly for those who lean literary. No shade.

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Where Sherlock Is Becoming Sherlock

Death Cloud by Andrew Lane
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I liked this pretty well; it's an entertaining young Sherlock Holmes novel, and it does some things right. 3 stars.

I almost gave it a 4. It's breezy (which is good, as it's a YA novel) and has pretty good action and good pacing.

But it isn't a great Sherlock Holmes novel. In fact, if this were just some random kid as the MC, I might have liked it more. As a pretty big Sherlock fan, I've read many, many different versions of the character, nearly always enjoying them, but the key (IMO) is getting Sherlock right. I don't think the author has done that.

In fairness, I think he's done exactly what he set out to do. He started with a normal kid and is showing us how he became Sherlock. But I don't think that works. This young man doesn't seem like he's observant or a good student or particularly knowledgeable about anything. I find it hard to imagine this iconic character, this best of all detectives, could ever have been an unimpressive young man. If he wasn't soaking up all kinds of information already, I don't know how he could ever achieve it as the adult we know.

I like the characters in the story, though, and their purpose is to turn this kid into Sherlock. The author created an American tutor who is teaching him how to notice things and how to think. To make him more active and self-reliant, the author has him befriend an independent young orphan who pushes him out of his comfort zone. And similarly, the teacher's daughter encourages him to be better than he is. All of this is meant to create the adult Sherlock we all know.

Though I liked the characters, I didn't love the overall dynamic. A Sherlock who isn't active and in charge isn't Sherlock.

Still, it was entertaining enough I think I'll buy the next one and try a bit more. Hoping for more.

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Where Sherlock Faces Threats from the Past

The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Ripper Legacy by David Stuart Davies
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

An entertaining, brisk read. I enjoyed it. I didn't love it, but it's all good.

One of the great pleasures in reading pastiche/continuations/fan fiction like this (or Star Trek or Buffy or whatever) is already being familiar with settings and characters and the general context. The story, which is the center of genre fiction like this, can take off immediately. There is no unnecessary throat-clearing or exposition, and skipping past that makes the story gallop from the start. And if the author does a good job of recreating the characters, as David Stuart Davies does here, you have the pleasure of joining your long-time literary friends on another adventure. This feels like the genuine Sherlock with the real Watson.

All of that makes this and many similar books in this series a real pleasure for Sherlock fans.

This story involves a kidnapping and a dangerous connection with the royal family that extends back to the infamous Jack the Ripper murders. An old villain makes an appearance. And Mycroft needs Sherlock's help. Good stuff. The elements work well, and the action is everything you want in such a book.

The ending is logical, and admittedly similar to others found in the original canon, butt doesn't entirely satisfy me, which is why I didn't love it. Sure, it's okay. It's not cheating. But it reminds me a little of the end of Raiders of the Lost Arc. I wanted to see what happened after the end. Maybe there'll be a sequel and we'll circle back a bit.

I hope so.

Anyway, I still liked it, quite a bit actually, and I definitely recommend it. Particularly, of course, for Sherlock fans.

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Where Charlotte Fences With Moriarty

Miss Moriarty, I Presume? by Sherry Thomas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Another good installment in one of my favorite series. This was a well-written, fun book, and it's recommended along with all the others.

Not quite as awesome as the rest of the series, IMO, so a 4 instead of 5; it got a bit slow in the middle third. But the last third or so is really great again. And I like the ending.

Charlotte Holmes, who the world thinks works for her brother Sherlock (who doesn't exist), has gotten increasingly embroiled with Moriarty, pretty much by accident, in the last few books. He doesn't have her full story and is watching her, but Charlotte knows she's in danger. Now Moriarty himself is tasking her to check on his daughter in a sort of religious retreat quite a ways from London. Whether his daughter is really alive is a mystery; whether he intends to do Charlotte and her friends harm is another mystery; what exactly is going on at the little cultish enclave is another. And all of it gets tied up in one story by the end.

I regret a little that Moriarty features so much in the story now. Brittany Cavallaro's Charlotte Holmes series (where she's a descendant of the real Sherlock, set in the present) is also a lot of fun, and it's fantastic to a point, but it gets weighed down by focusing on Moriarty and the enmity between them. They're so evenly matched that the story almost stops. That series becomes more like spy-versus-spy than a detective story, and I lost interest. There's a similar dynamic in this book. You want to see Charlotte be awesome, solving some mystery, being smarter than everyone else, but it's less fun when she's facing someone just as smart. (I hated this in Iron Man, too; the MC invents a cool iron suit that flies, giving him this interesting advantage over criminals, and the first thing the screenwriters do is give him a bad guy with the same suit, negating everything cool about him. One of the early Superman movies did the same thing.)

It's still a fun book, and there are lots of great surprises; I'd just rather see Charlotte go up against regular people and stump them with her amazing brain. That's more fun for me.

YMMV.

But to sum up--I still liked it and it's still recommended. Lots of fun. I'm ready for the next one.

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Where Sherlock Chases Sherlock

The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - The Counterfeit Detective by Stuart Douglas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Sherlock and Watson cross the ocean to track down a NYC detective going by the name of Sherlock Holmes. But when he gets there, no one will talk to him, and the case leads to murder. Like it so often does.

A good mystery--inventive and entertaining, if not wholly even. (I found my attention wandering in the middle just a bit, but it pulled it together toward the end. Or I did, maybe.) Good enough that I was glad to pick it up in its turn, which is usually how I judge whether a book is successful. Part of that, I'm sure, is that it can be easier and more satisfying to read stories about familiar characters in familiar settings, like Sherlock or Star Trek or probably any long-running series, as long as the authors do a pretty good job of recreating those characters, and IMO that is the case here.

If you read several books at a time, a little from each book each day--that's the way I approach reading--I believe that the order you pick them up will tell you how you're enjoying them even more than deep reflection will. This one was in the middle of my stack, but always nearer the top. (It sparked pretty good joy, is what I'm trying to explain.)

:)

Anyway, I'm digging this Sherlock series written by multiple authors, and they continue to be good enough to lead me on to the next. So I'd recommend the book as well as the series ("The further adventures of...") to other Sherlock fans.

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Where Watson Goes to Prison

The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - The Improbable Prisoner by Stuart Douglas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a well-plotted, well-written Sherlock Holmes story. It had some flaws, IMO, but I enjoyed it.

The characters are true to form, which I think is important, and though the story is slightly outside the tradition in terms of scale (over months) and location (mostly in prison), I think it works. The ending was somewhat awkward and anticlimactic--really, it had two endings--but it was pretty satisfying, so I'll allow it. :)

Watson gets framed for murder and spends most of the story in prison. Holmes performs his usual miracles to keep him alive (surely no spoiler), though much of his work is only revealed after the fact. It's not quite as fun this way; I want to see Watson out with Holmes, finding clues, making discoveries, but it has its own charm.

Overall, I found it entertaining and well worth reading. It kept climbing to the top of my "now reading" pile ahead of a few others. If you like Sherlock Holmes pastiche, I'm pretty confident this would work for you.

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Where Watson and Holmes Have Aged a Bit

The Patchwork Devil by Cavan Scott
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This modern Sherlock Holmes novel, set at the end of WWI with an older Watson and Holmes, does a great job of telling an entertaining, creative story while remaining true to the original stories in all the ways that matter to me. I enjoyed it a lot, and feel like it invites in new readers while doing no harm to the canonical stories or their legacy.

Although I've read many twists on Sherlock Holmes (alternate settings, gender-swapped characters, fantasy versions, comedic versions), I have pretty much avoided books purporting to be based on the original or staying close to canon. Not sure why. Afraid to be disappointed, maybe? I wasn't. Or maybe I thought it'd be boring. Wrong again. While there is some updating here, primarily in order to suit a modern reader's expectations, the language, pacing, characterization, and style are very consistent with the originals. The story-telling is balanced, with decent attention paid to characterization without slowing down the action or the sleuthing. I wouldn't say it might have been written by Arthur Conan Doyle, but I will say he might have liked it. I did, anyway.

So it works, IMO, not only as a continuation of the Sherlock tradition but as a fast-paced mystery novel in its own right. I see now I shoulda tried these earlier.

This title mixes Holmes with a bit of Frankenstein in a credible way. A recently severed hand is located and identified as belonging to a man dead several years. It kicks off an excellent mystery, and there are lots of bad guys to create chaos while Sherlock and Watson try to do as older men what they had accomplished so often when younger. With an emotionally and intellectually satisfying ending, I have no notes. Now I'm judging I probably should have given it all 5 stars.

Recommended for Sherlock fans as well as fans of historical mysteries.

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Where Sherlock Fights the Martians. For Reals

The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - The Martian Menace by Eric Brown
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a fun Sherlock/War of the Worlds crossover, and I really enjoyed it. It's a couple decades after the first failed invasion, and supposedly the Martians are trying to make up for their ill-advised attack. The truth, though, is they are still at it (which is kind of a spoiler except that it's in the title) and they want to remove Sherlock (older here) from the picture. It's silly, of course; the science fiction part, with a thriving civilization on Mars, is impossible, as we know, but the story still works, IMO.

Watson and Sherlock are still the men we know, and so this is still sufficiently plausible in their world to make the plot hold together. We get only a couple new minor characters and a couple call-backs from vintage stories, but it's enough, with the action plot, to make it a fun read. In fact, I almost gave it all 5 stars (which for me means "enjoyed reading," not necessarily "our grandchildren will read this book"), except there are a couple slower parts that dragged it down just a bit. Overall, though, it's clever and entertaining, and the conclusion is satisfying. I would definitely look for other books penned by this author.

I wouldn't recommend this for Sherlock readers who prefer traditional stories, as they'd likely find it too silly to enjoy. Honestly, they're not likely to read past the title anyway. But Sherlock readers who are intrigued by the premise and enjoy pulp fiction would probably find a lot to like here.

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Where Watson and Sherlock Solve Fantasy Mysteries

The Angel of the Crows by Katherine Addison
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This is a very entertaining and somewhat flawed book. 5 stars for the fun and -1 star for the bits of disappointment. Let me explain.

This is Sherlock pastiche, with Sherlock as a kind of crow-winged angel in an England full of supernatural beings, including hellhounds, vampires, werewolves, and so on. Dr. Watson returns from Afghanistan with a spiritual and physical injury inflicted by a fallen angel and, as in the original stories, meets Sherlock and becomes his roommate. I find this combination of weirdness (though there's more, obviously) works very well. The story is told like a series of short stories, all of which are reimaginings of some of the original Sherlock stories, and they are all held together by an overall arc concerning Jack the Ripper.

The stories are clever and entertaining, both in their originality and in the way they follow the contours of familiar stories, and I'd love to see more of that. Dr. Watson figures more prominently in these than in the originals, and while Sherlock is still brilliant and capable, he's far less so in this book than we are used to seeing. However, this is balanced by a greater intimacy between the characters, which I appreciated and found very touching.

I didn't love everything. I was disappointed that Dr. Watson had a secret that seemed important but turned out to be irrelevant to the story. I kept waiting for something to come of it, but the author never used the secret for anything significant, and it felt like Chekhov's gun was never taken down and fired. (Maybe there'll be a sequel?) And the unifying arc was ended abruptly in a way that didn't reward the reader's patience. It seemed like something big was gonna happen, but instead it just got solved and packaged up in a super straightforward way, like a TV show planned for 10 episodes that gets canceled early and has to wind everything up in 7.

That said--I really liked it, and would love to read another. Lots of room in this particular universe for some fun stories.

Recommended for Sherlock fans and fantasy readers, especially those in both groups.

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Where Enola and Sherlock Team Up

Enola Holmes and the Black Barouche by Nancy Springer
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Seventh book in the series. I've enjoyed them all. And this one is just as fun, just as compelling, as any that came before.

What I really like is how Enola's situation is a little different in every book, and the author uses that to her advantage. In this novel, Enola is not forced to hide from Sherlock, and though they don't have a perfect understanding--she's still Enola and he's still Sherlock--it's close enough for them to trust each other. This allows them to team up, which brings a different feeling to the mystery and its solution, and I loved it.

These books are a treasure, just the right vibe if you want conflict and stakes but not so much it's oppressive, and lately they have been my go-to series for reading before bed.

TL;DR: If you enjoy Sherlock variations, get going already. :)

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Where I Happily Get Embroiled In One More Holmes Series

The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I enjoy all kinds of Holmes retellings and embellishments, and when Netflix adapted Enola Holmes as a movie I really liked it--hadn't heard of the series before--but that meant it was time to read the original.

I liked this well enough. It was cute, a fast story, and I enjoyed reading it, though somewhat less than I hoped. TBH, it seems a little thin, with much less happening than I expected. (The movie tricked me a little.) I can't knock it for having YA pacing, but I was sorry that Enola doesn't display the confidence and competence I thought she would. I suspect that's coming; it looks like the series follows a long arc, which will give her character time to develop. But much of the fun in Sherlock Holmes stories is when the character makes leaps of deduction or displays an amazing breadth of knowledge. Enola has one such moment, and I hoped for more.

Anyway, it's cleverly written, the character is likable, and there's lots of room for sequels. It leans toward cozy mystery, but there is still a decent amount of action, so I suspect the future novels will have a similar balance. I'm looking forward to testing that theory.

Recommended for Sherlock Holmes fans with wide tastes and for YA readers in general.

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Where I Embrace Yet Another Sherlock-type Series

The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes by Leonard Goldberg
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I really enjoyed reading this book and thought to find everyone else thought the same, but I saw a lot of super negative reviews. So I dunno. Anyway, I'm sticking with my score, because it's how much I personally liked it. Well, I liked it a lot. 5 stars.

As a rule, I like all the Sherlock Holmes stuff: pastiche, sequels, fan fiction, reimaginings, graphic novels, and crossovers, so this is right up my alley. I especially like it with a female lead, as in Brittany Cavallaro and Sherry Thomas's series. (Serieses? Serii?) This novel, and apparently this series, fits right in that groove, and I liked it.

I also like novels where capable main characters like and respect each other and are impressed with each other. Awesome characters being awesome, clapping one another on the back for it. We've got that here, and I'm ready for it.

I can't really account for the negative reactions other readers have, but I suppose we have different expectations. Weird.

The setting is London, just prior to WWI. Doctor John Watson is still alive, though obviously getting on in years, and his adult son is also a doctor. They are investigating a death which seems suspicious. Both play their part in the story and are a pleasure to follow, but it is Joanna Blalock who is the hero. (Can we dispense with "heroine?" Does anybody want to keep that? I'm always double-checking the spelling...)

Joanna Blalock, the unacknowledged daughter of Sherlock, is brilliant, confident, brash, and brave, so right in the Sherlock tradition. She also has an emotional life, showing genuine warmth in places, which is staking out different territory from her "father." To me, that only adds to the story, and I like how it was managed. In many other ways, though, this novel is true to the original, particularly in tone.

The plot is remarkable for not being remarkable. It was reminiscent of many Sherlock stories, similar enough to be a pleasure for fans but not seem out of place. As always, this is IMO. And the pace seemed about right, with little slowing down the action.

So, yeah; I liked it.

Anyway, I'm looking for the sequels. A good amount of my fellow readers enjoyed it as much as I did, so maybe you're one of us and will love it. Maybe not. Whatevs.

Conditionally recommended. Not for grumpy people. LOL. :)

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