The Immortal Holmes
April 4th, 2005It looks like the Sherlock Holmes revival is in full force. I see the paperback edition of Laura King’s latest, The Game, in every bookstore I visit, but the real story this month is the release of two highly anticipated Holmes pastiches in hardcover.
A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin takes us into familiar territory: the twilight years of the great detective. It seems more like a work of so-called literary fiction than a detective story: “This subtle and wise work is more than just a reimagining of a classic character. It is a profound meditation on faultiness of memory and how, as we grow older, the way we see the world is inevitably altered.”
Caleb Carr, who has done this sort of thing before, looks like he will give us a Holmes we can recognize and a story we can swallow:
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson are summoned to the aid of Queen Victoria in Scotland by a telegram from Holmes’ brother, Mycroft, a royal advisor. Rushed northward on a royal train—and nearly murdered themselves en route—the pair are soon joined by Mycroft, and learn of the brutal killings of two of the Queen’s servants, a renowned architect and his foreman, both of whom had been working on the renovation of the famous and forbidding Royal Palace of Holyrood, in Edinburgh.
The Italian Secretary is due out next Tuesday, April 10, but it’s already shipping from Amazon.com
Carr’s book sounds like a lot more fun, but Cullin’s has been getting good reviews across the board. What’ s a gent to do? Why, read them both, of course!
April 5th, 2005 at 3:03 pm
The Carr book is already on the shelves at my local Barnes & Noble. I remember people loving his early books but he’s not gotten good reviews for the last few, as I recall. Never read him myself.