Between the Thames and the Tiber

April 4, 2011
Riccardi's second pastiche volume (after 2003's The Oriental Casebook of Sherlock Holmes) offers tantalizing glimpses of what might have been, as many of the dozen short stories have promising setups. Unfortunately, the resolutions of the intriguing puzzles the author crafts for the great detective are almost all unsatisfying, if not downright silly. The first sign of trouble comes in Dr. Watson's preface, in which Watson claims that Holmes "came to the conclusion that it was really no concern of his whether Moriarty had ceased to exist or not." But things really go off the rails in the second story, "A Case of Criminal Madness," in which Holmes thwarts a villain's bioweapons with some of his own. Internal inconsistencies, illogical developments, and open-ended conclusions won't please those who seek quality continuations of Doyle's beloved characters.