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
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.
Another sweltering month in Charlotte, another boatload of mysteries past and present for overworked, overstressed forensic anthropologist Temperance Brennan.
A week after the night she chases but fails to catch a mysterious trespasser outside her town house, some unknown party texts Tempe four images of a corpse that looks as if it’s been chewed by wild hogs, because it has been. Showboat Medical Examiner Margot Heavner makes it clear that, breaking with her department’s earlier practice (The Bone Collection, 2016, etc.), she has no intention of calling in Tempe as a consultant and promptly identifies the faceless body herself as that of a young Asian man. Nettled by several errors in Heavner’s analysis, and even more by her willingness to share the gory details at a press conference, Tempe launches her own investigation, which is not so much off the books as against the books. Heavner isn’t exactly mollified when Tempe, aided by retired police detective Skinny Slidell and a host of experts, puts a name to the dead man. But the hints of other crimes Tempe’s identification uncovers, particularly crimes against children, spur her on to redouble her efforts despite the new M.E.’s splenetic outbursts. Before he died, it seems, Felix Vodyanov was linked to a passenger ferry that sank in 1994, an even earlier U.S. government project to research biological agents that could control human behavior, the hinky spiritual retreat Sparkling Waters, the dark web site DeepUnder, and the disappearances of at least four schoolchildren, two of whom have also turned up dead. And why on earth was Vodyanov carrying Tempe’s own contact information? The mounting evidence of ever more and ever worse skulduggery will pull Tempe deeper and deeper down what even she sees as a rabbit hole before she confronts a ringleader implicated in “Drugs. Fraud. Breaking and entering. Arson. Kidnapping. How does attempted murder sound?”
Forget about solving all these crimes; the signal triumph here is (spoiler) the heroine’s survival.Pub Date: March 17, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9821-3888-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2020
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be...
Box takes another break from his highly successful Joe Pickett series (Stone Cold, 2014, etc.) for a stand-alone about a police detective, a developmentally delayed boy, and a package everyone in North Dakota wants to grab.
Cassandra Dewell can’t leave Montana’s Lewis and Clark County fast enough for her new job as chief investigator for Jon Kirkbride, sheriff of Bakken County. She leaves behind no memories worth keeping: her husband is dead, her boss has made no bones about disliking her, and she’s looking forward to new responsibilities and the higher salary underwritten by North Dakota’s sudden oil boom. But Bakken County has its own issues. For one thing, it’s cold—a whole lot colder than the coldest weather Cassie’s ever imagined. For another, the job she turns out to have been hired for—leading an investigation her new boss doesn’t feel he can entrust to his own force—makes her queasy. The biggest problem, though, is one she doesn’t know about until it slaps her in the face. A fatal car accident that was anything but accidental has jarred loose a stash of methamphetamines and cash that’s become the center of a battle between the Sons of Freedom, Bakken County’s traditional drug sellers, and MS-13, the Salvadorian upstarts who are muscling in on their territory. It’s a setup that leaves scant room for law enforcement officers or for Kyle Westergaard, the 12-year-old paperboy damaged since birth by fetal alcohol syndrome, who’s walked away from the wreck with a prize all too many people would kill for.
A suspenseful, professional-grade north country procedural whose heroine, a deft mix of compassion and attitude, would be welcome to return and tie up the gaping loose end Box leaves. The unrelenting cold makes this the perfect beach read.Pub Date: July 28, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-58321-7
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2015
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