I didn’t much care for this. David Stuart Davies is a decent writer and a renowned Holmesian, but something just felt off.

As one of the Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series it’s a pastiche, but the narrow meaning of the word “pastiche” is that it’s an imitation of the style of previous works, and that might be a place to start. While part of the book is presented in the canonical manner of being the written recollections of Dr. Watson, the excerpts from his journal are interlaced with chapters from a third-person omniscient point of view describing actions and events occurring elsewhere. Holmes’s thoughts are even described, which I found jarring.

Also, if not quite jarring but disconcerting, was the character of Holmes. He’s quite unpleasant here, especially in the early going. Not just brusque but rude and insulting, even to the husband and wife who have lost their 8-year-old child. He’s also not very impressive as a detective. He knows that the lost child had been adopted because . . . his picture doesn’t look like either of his parents. Later, he will be embarrassed when he pays a pair of prostitutes to tell him where he can find someone when he’s standing right below a tavern sign with the person’s name on it. So much for his powers of observation. Another big clue will be provided by pictures of the same country house hanging on the walls of a man’s office and home. Even Watson should have noticed that. But then a pattern is held to where Holmes is always one step ahead and Watson a couple of steps behind (which leads to his being captured by the bad guys not once but twice).

Another point that I thought out of place was some of the action. Here’s a taste:

Inside the chamber, Henshaw had taken advantage of the distraction caused by Gaunt’s exit and had scrabbled across the floor to retrieve the gun. With a cry of satisfaction he grabbed it and, clambering to his feet, aimed it at Holmes. Without hesitation, he pulled the trigger. The detective feinted to the left, the bullet just clipping the shoulder of his overcoat. Henshaw roared his dismay and was about to shoot again, but Holmes fired first. Henshaw was hit in the chest and the force of the blow flung his body backwards. With an animal-like bellow he crashed against the far wall of the room, and then slowly slithered down to the floor, leaving a thin trail of blood in his wake.

Watson describes this scene as being “like some violent mummer’s play,” but what it sounds like to me is hard-boiled detective fiction of the American school. And this isn’t the first man Holmes kills in the book.

A pastiche is fan service, and certain popular elements tend to show up in a lot of them. Characters like Mycroft Holmes and Professor Moriarty weren’t seen very often in the canon, nor do the Baker Street Irregulars appear more than a couple of times, but they’re here again, as they are in most Holmes pastiches. But the problem with recurring characters like these is that they become stock figures. Here is Moriarty finally coming face-to-face with Holmes:

“Call me sentimental, Sherlock Holmes, but I have a whim to take a final drink with you. We have gazed at each other for some time across the great divide that separates us and yet we share some strange kind of bond. We are both masters of our profession, you and I; meticulous, brilliant and resourceful. It is these qualities that almost make us brothers.”

You can see what I mean by calling this stuff fan service. But while fans may eat it up I thought it just seemed tired.

The plot itself, finally, mines the Stephen Knight thesis that the Ripper slayings were meant to cover-up the affairs of Prince Albert Victor, then second-in-line to the throne. I don’t think this is very likely, but it has been a popular source for subsequent fictions, like the film Murder by Decree and Alan Moore’s graphic novel From Hell. I thought it unnecessary here though, and couldn’t figure out why the government considered it to be such a big deal that the prince had a love child. Wasn’t that common to most royals? And how would anyone prove it anyway? The eye test?

So to me it felt like going through the motions, giving Holmes fans a bit of everything except maybe a cameo from Irene Adler (another minor figure from the canon who has enjoyed a long deuterocanonical afterlife). But the mystery wasn’t that interesting and there was an air of glumness and nastiness about it too. Not my thing, but if you wanted to be generous you could see it as an attempt to grow the brand.

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