Entertaining, Downton Abbey–era addition to the Holmes homage canon.
Dr. Watson teams up with the son of Holmes’ landlady to investigate the death of the celebrated sleuth in this Arthur Conan Doyle–inspired novel.
Holmes is really gone this time, Dr. Watson notes in his journal. The detective didn’t die at Reichenbach Falls 21 years ago; he resurfaced a few years later, eventually retiring to Sussex. Now, though, Holmes is truly dead, his body just found, with blunt-object injuries, in a granary in Kent. Watson goes to Baker Street to discuss the news with Mrs. Hudson, Holmes’ former landlady. Her son Christopher, now living in Holmes’ flat and contemplating medical school, asks to see the body and then declares that Holmes actually died being run over by a car of a recent make, most likely a 1912 Renault. Watson also travels to Bedlam to probe Holmes’ incarcerated nemesis Professor Moriarty, who asks to attend the funeral. Holmes’ will is then read, revealing an odd behest to provide ongoing monies to Delilah Church, one of the “Baker Street Irregulars” street kids who helped Holmes in his work. Her appearance at Holmes’ funeral, where Moriarty kills his guard before being hauled back to Bedlam, further convinces Christopher and Watson to find out what was really going on with Holmes. In alternating journal entries, they detail their journey through the social strata, which includes interactions with Wiggins, the Irregulars leader–turned–crime boss, various police officials and an aristocratic MP perhaps in Moriarty’s pocket. The case concludes with a fiery showdown that plays out the consequences of some disappointing (particularly to Watson), years-earlier action by Holmes. Holmes fans will likely be tickled by Fable’s tale, which amusingly brings Watson into the early 20th century, contending with a motorbike-riding, jeans-wearing Christopher and even a suffragette rally. The mystery plot gets a bit tangled at times, with an array of players and incidents, yet this also produces the kind of narrative Gordian knot that Holmes aficionados will relish. Overall, it’s a fun, fine setup for a new series pairing Watson with a plucky young partner.
Entertaining, Downton Abbey–era addition to the Holmes homage canon.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: Dog Ear Publisher
Review Posted Online: Dec. 10, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
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