No one story is outstanding—but what does that matter in a saga clearly destined to go on forever?
Hasn’t everybody in the Holmes canon, from Irene Adler to Inspector Lestrade, already been heard from? Hardly, according to this collection of twelve and a half new stories most notable for their cool audacity in fleshing out the Master’s legend with hitherto-unsuspected episodes (Richard A. Lupoff’s account of his tutelage under the Chevalier Auguste Dupin, Peter Tremayne’s manful attempt to present the true story of his duel with Colonel Sebastian Moran, Cara Black’s romantic idyll with Irene Adler, and Gerard Dole’s boldly superfluous collaboration of Holmes with his page boy Billy, graduated to detective status himself) and their ingenuity in manipulating the unexpected narrator’s point of view (from Gary Lovisi’s Mycroft Holmes, who is running Professor Moriarty as a counterspy, to Linda Robertson’s Mrs. Hudson, who tells her slight story to English Fireside Magazine). Michael Mallory and editor Kurland continue their series, respectively, starring the second Mrs. Watson and Moriarty himself (The Great Game, 2001), and C.D. Ewing, in a charming half-sized tailpiece, collects bite-sized reminiscences from the King of Bohemia and other unheard voices. Though George Alec Effinger’s mysterious East intrigue is more Fu Manchu than Sherlock Holmes, and Mel Gilden’s take on James Phillimore’s umbrella and Norman Schreiber’s portrait of Billy, of the Baker Street Irregulars, are perfunctory, Barbara Hambly (the first Mrs. Watson) and Kurland provide clever mysteries that could easily pull their weight outside the canon.
No one story is outstanding—but what does that matter in a saga clearly destined to go on forever?Pub Date: Feb. 1, 2003
ISBN: 0-312-28093-9
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2002
A superb romp.
Hollywood operators and creative washouts collide across five decades and two continents in a brilliant, madcap meditation on fate.
The sixth novel by Walter (The Financial Lives of the Poets, 2009, etc.) opens in April 1962 with the arrival of starlet Dee Moray in a flyspeck Italian resort town. Dee is supposed to be filming the Liz Taylor-Richard Burton costume epic Cleopatra, but her inconvenient pregnancy (by Burton) has prompted the studio to tuck her away. A smitten young man, Pasquale, runs the small hotel where she’s hidden, and he’s contemptuous of the studio lackey, Michael Deane, charged with keeping Dee out of sight. From there the story sprays out in multiple directions, shifting time and perspective to follow Deane’s evolution into a Robert Evans-style mogul; Dee’s hapless aging-punk son; an alcoholic World War II vet who settles into Pasquale’s hotel to peck away at a novel; and a young screenwriter eagerly pitching a dour movie about the Donner Party. Much of the pleasure of the novel comes from watching Walter ingeniously zip back and forth to connect these loose strands, but it largely succeeds on the comic energy of its prose and the liveliness of its characters. A theme that bubbles under the story is the variety of ways real life energizes great art—Walter intersperses excerpts from his characters’ plays, memoirs, film treatments and novels to show how their pasts inform their best work. Unlikely coincidences abound, but they feel less like plot contrivances than ways to serve a broader theme about how the unlikely, unplanned moments in our lives are the most meaningful ones. And simply put, Walter’s prose is a joy—funny, brash, witty and rich with ironic twists. He’s taken all of the tricks of the postmodern novel and scoured out the cynicism, making for a novel that's life-affirming but never saccharine.
A superb romp.Pub Date: June 12, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-06-192812-3
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2012
BOOK TO SCREEN
PERSPECTIVES
A major novel — the first since East of Eden — this brings into focus a conflict within a man's personality which will have wide, perhaps too wide, recognition value. John Steinbeck's special gift of compassion might have turned this into a sentimental exercise. As it develops, however, this is a taut, realistic, controversial portrait of Ethan Allen Hawley, scion of an old family, bearing his heritage of high ideals, intrinsic honesty — and fear of insecurity, while confronted with a shattered fortune- the old homestead the only thing left, and a job as grocery clerk in a store he had once owned. The pressures on him come to a head in this winter of his discontent, as his wife (who is basically an ideal mate, sensitive, perceptive, loving) lashes out at him for not giving his family the wherewithal to support their name; his son and daughter chide him for his failures — and a tiny inheritance of his wife, Mary, offers a possible loophole for taking a long chance. And then he is shown a way — involving a compromise with his integrity, a betrayal of his standards-and he succumbs, actually going beyond the initial opportunity to trap two men to whom he owes affection and loyalty. What happens is not wholly within the accepted pattern — nor is the outcome predictable. But Steinbeck sustains the reader's suspense, poses issues of responsibility — a man to his friend, to his employer, to his son, to himself — and leaves the resolution in final analysis to the reader. It is a fascinating and disturbing book, uncomfortably close to the challenge the average man faces in today's materialistic world.
Pub Date: June 23, 1961
ISBN: 0143039482
Page Count: 274
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 1961
SEEN & HEARD
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
