Though the level of inspiration in individual stories varies widely, every fan will find different reasons to cheer. And...
“Inspired” is the key word here, for contributors have been encouraged to interpret their remit even more broadly than in the editors’ previous two collections (In the Company of Sherlock Holmes, 2014, etc.).
John Connolly sets the tone by confronting Holmes and Watson, enshrined in a magical library after Holmes’ death, with their inferior post-Reichenbach avatars. David Morrell, Jonathan Maberry, and William Kent Krueger walk similar metafictional tightropes when they arrange debates between Arthur Conan Doyle and a spectral Holmes over spiritualism, bring C. Auguste Dupin to console Watson at Holmes’ empty grave, and present a child-psychologist Watson providing therapy to a boy who believes he’s Sherlock Holmes. Other contributors briskly update the Great Detective. Meg Gardiner’s sleuth investigates a breach in computer security; Hank Phillippi Ryan’s Annabelle Holmes follows a trail of pictogram emails to a missing fiancee; Gary Phillips’ Sherlock, in a rayon shirt and bell-bottoms, investigates the assassination of an iconic civil rights leader; Cory Doctorow explores the problem of a conscience-driven leaker of secret intelligence. Meanwhile, back in the Victorian era, Tasha Alexander sketches a deft and funny prequel to “A Scandal in Bohemia,” Dana Cameron’s free-wheeling Watson recounts Holmes’ search for a hidden legacy, and Tony Lee and Bevis Musson give Mrs. Hudson a thimble-sized comic-book case more notable for visual style than narrative invention. Sherlock is channeled by Catriona McPherson’s lady’s maid, Deborah Crombie’s cheeky goddaughter Sherry Watson, Anne Perry’s TV Holmes, Denise Mina’s not-a-witch Shirley, and Michael Scott’s Dublin madam, who assists the police in their investigation of a celebrated real-life theft. Although most of these tales are more notable for their high concepts than the ways they’re worked out, Hallie Ephron’s tale of a movie actress who once played Irene Adler and is now understudying a much younger Irene is a delight from beginning to end.
Though the level of inspiration in individual stories varies widely, every fan will find different reasons to cheer. And they’ll all marvel at the inventive range of this salute to the greatest of all fictional detectives.Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-68177-225-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: July 18, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Familiar thrills lashed to a razor’s edge.
A Spanish cop, incurring a crime lord’s vengeful and wholly unearned wrath, is saddled with a new partner she’s not crazy about herself.
Agreeing to take a late-night call to cover for a colleague who wants to go home to his wife and baby, Officer Cristina Sánchez Pradell, of Marviña’s Policía Local, finds herself face to face with a man she takes to be an armed intruder. Before he can identify himself as Ian Templeton, who broke into his own house after he forgot his keys, he’s startled by a dark figure behind him and fires three shots, killing Angela Fry, the pregnant girlfriend who’d returned with him. Templeton, who’s actually Jack Cleland, a British fugitive widely sought for drug trafficking and killing a cop, blames Cristina’s presence for Angela’s death and swears revenge against her whole family. That includes her husband, Antonio; their 10-year-old son, Lucas; her cancer-stricken sister, Nuri; Nuri’s husband, fellow police officer Paco; and Ana, Cristina’s deaf, blind aunt, whose role will be pivotal. Cleland’s threats ring hollow as long as he’s in custody, but on the journey to transfer him to the custody of John Mackenzie, a disgraced ex-cop on his first day as an investigator for Britain's National Crime Agency, Cleland’s underlings break him out, killing one cop and shooting Paco nonfatally so that he can relay the news to Cristina. Mackenzie, a Scot who has long-standing issues with authority figures of all kinds, is ready to take the next flight home, but Sub-Inspector Miguel López, the chief of Marviña Station, insists that he stay and help Cristina, who clearly needs all the help she can get, however antipathetic its source. As the unwilling partners track down leads to Cleland’s present whereabouts, Cleland, effortlessly outmaneuvering them, zeroes in on one soft target after another. May (I’ll Keep You Safe, 2018, etc.) keeps a few surprises in reserve but not enough to prevent you from thinking you’ve seen this all before.
Familiar thrills lashed to a razor’s edge.Pub Date: March 31, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-78429-498-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Mobius
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
A solid sense of place, a looming sense of menace: a frequently gripping read.
Veste’s moody procedural tells the story of a pair of Liverpool detectives tracking a killer influenced by local mythology.
Louise Henderson, the investigator at the heart of this novel, is a detective with secrets. She keeps some from her partner, DS Shipley; when the book opens, she’s also grappling with moments of sudden and inexplicable terror that leave her unsure of their origin and unsettled by their impact on her. Soon, the detectives take up the case of a woman who escaped a deadly attack—and who believes it was the work of the title character, a local legend who may be a murderer, a supernatural creature, or something else entirely. Not long after that, a dead body shows up, which suggests a connection to an earlier death, but a host of loose ends hang for the detectives to piece together—and there’s also the matter of a series of flashbacks set years earlier, when a teenager vanished. How these seemingly disparate elements connect—sometimes linearly, sometimes via well-made twists—leads the novel to its conclusion. Veste’s slow-burning approach works well, sustaining the sense of general wrongness that gives the narrative so much atmosphere. There are a few heavy-handed moments here and there. “They thought they knew evil. They had no idea” is perhaps the most flagrant example; as this book is either about a serial killer or an urban legend come to life, that sense of menace is already built in to the narrative well enough. But the conclusion is largely satisfying, playing well off the dynamics Veste established over the course of the story.
A solid sense of place, a looming sense of menace: a frequently gripping read.Pub Date: Feb. 5, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-4926-7129-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Sourcebooks Landmark
Review Posted Online: Nov. 12, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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