ONE MUST TELL THE BEES

This homage to the Sherlock Holmes saga gives readers both his first case and his last.

Matthews’ novel begins with a manuscript that Holmes has sent Dr. John H. Watson detailing his adventures as a very young man in Civil War–era America (who knew?). Not only did Holmes solve his first case (spies stealing gun powder from the Du Pont works in Delaware) there, but he also became invaluable to Secretary of War Edwin M. Stanton, earned the confidence and friendship of President Abraham Lincoln, and was instrumental in the tracking down of the villainous John Wilkes Booth. And all this before Holmes reached his majority. He befriended Abraham, a Black boy who became his partner in sleuthing, showing up that nasty and opportunistic bully Allan Pinkerton. Readers also learn of Holmes’ very humble, Dickensian childhood as a boy named Johnnie Barrow: his brutish father; his mother who died young; and his brother, Mycroft, who essentially raised his sibling. It was Mycroft who decided they would become the Holmes brothers, erasing their past, and it was Lincoln himself who dubbed the detective “Sherlock.” Back to the present day. Watson, retired, receives an urgent message—along with that manuscript—instructing him to take a fast train from London to the south coast of England. There, Holmes, long retired himself, is a very contented beekeeper. On the way, Watson discovers that there has been a murder in one of the train’s compartments. The message proves to have been a lure, and Holmes and Watson face a final test at the hands of—well, no spoilers, but it is, as the doctor might say, deucedly clever.

The tone and the writing certainly ring true in these pages. In Matthews, Holmes has an acolyte to be proud of. (Indeed, it is a bit creepy how Holmes has reached a place in literature where he seems to readers to be a real, historical person—the ultimate compliment to poor Arthur Conan Doyle.) This novel seems intended to be the final word on the life of the esteemed detective. It’s no spoiler to say that the great man dies at the end, peacefully, with the humble and the exalted attending the service in a little country church. For all his famous career achievements in London, Holmes finds rest in picture-postcard rural England. Matthews’ portrayal of the sleuth is one that readers have come to know: Holmes’ affection for Watson, for example, which does not prevent his browbeating of the beleaguered man, and his constant showing off of his powers of observation and deduction. And if there is such a thing as militant patience, that’s the good doctor. In some ways, the book is too detailed—too committed to tying up even imagined loose ends. When told that Holmes’ ambivalent attitude toward women goes back to his having had a twin sister, long lost, that their cruel father forced into debauchery, readers can only roll their eyes (really?). On the other hand, the “American” Holmes is a refreshing creature: willing (and eager) to learn, acting properly deferential, and quite lacking the airs that the audience associates with the Baker Street legend, for all his talents and virtues. And he can even handle a horse.

Holmes fans will enjoy this tale’s admirable verisimilitude and bracing storytelling.