Sherlock Holmes and the Shakespeare Letter

November 1, 2010
Two challenging problems vex Sherlock Holmes, who's been resuscitated after being frozen for decades in a Swiss glacier, in Grant's disappointing second mystery to feature the Victorian detective in the 21st century (after 2010's The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes): the theft of a newly discovered Shakespeare letter, which could resolve the question of the authorship of his plays, and the identity of the criminal behind a series of attacks in London aimed at musicians, whose instruments have been blowing up. Aided by journalist James Wilson, Holmes plausibly displays his deductive gifts in the Internet age, but too often straight sleuthing gives way to action sequences out of a James Bond film (e.g., bomb-loaded bats fly at a helicopter high above a Scottish castle). Grant's splendid execution of this intriguing concept in the first book offers some hope that he can rebound in the next.

November 15, 2010

The master detective, defrosted and revived nearly a century after he was immured in an Alpine glacier (The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes, 2010), returns for a second very contemporary case.

At first glance the mystery seems distinctly old-fashioned: Who purloined a letter, allegedly written in 1592 by one William Shakespeare, perhaps to the Dark Lady of the sonnets, that holograph expert Rachel Random was asked to authenticate? Since very few people even knew that Rachel's uncle, eminent Shakespearean Professor Hugh Blake, had uncovered the letter, suspicion falls on his family: his actress wife Lotte Linger, her sons Alexis Gray the critic and Bart Gray the scientist, and her daughter Marianne Hideaway, an Oxford undergraduate. Even though he's been dead for nearly 100 years, it doesn't take Holmes long to identify the culprit. By the time the guilty party confesses, however, the question of why someone would steal such an item has only deepened, and Holmes has become involved in a far more baffling riddle: Why have so many ill-assorted victims—an urban landscape artist, a fox-hunter, a pair of music reviewers—suffered indignity or worse from microbombs hidden in such unlikely objects as violins and vitamin pills? The link between the two cases leads Holmes and his roommate, journalist James Wilson ("not Watson"), to an Al Qaeda plot Holmes foils with an élan worthy of Conan Doyle.

The Sherlockian pastiche serves as brilliantly effective cover for a whimsical retro Chinese box of a puzzler reminiscent of Christopher Fowler's Peculiar Crimes Unit, one that's just as much fun as it sounds.

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

January 1, 2011

Having been rescued from a Swiss glacier, thawed out, and now back at 21 Baker Street, living with a new roommate, Sherlock Holmes still struggles with his old personality quirks. While fighting off a bout of monumental boredom, Holmes is asked to find a stolen letter attributed to William Shakespeare. The handful of people in the know about the letter include a wealthy British family both dysfunctional and brilliant. VERDICT Placing a resurrected Holmes in modern England using our technology and partnering him with Dr. James Wilson, who is very like the Watson of old, is a masterstroke. While not as as exciting as The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes, this fast-paced sequel and its engaging protagonists will appeal to Holmes fans.

Copyright 2011 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from November 15, 2010
At the beginning of this follow-up to the thoroughly entertaining The Strange Return of Sherlock Holmes (2010)in which Holmes, having been thawed out of a Swiss glacier and restored to life, paired up with a journalist, James Wilson, to solve a modern-day murderthe great detective is feeling a bit underappreciated. No one in this twenty-first-century world seems to need his special deductive powers and keen observational skills (the same result, he bemoans, can now be accomplished through sheer technology, like finding out where someone has been by using a GPS tracker). But then fortune smiles upon Holmes. The niece of one of Wilsons friends has a most interesting puzzle: someone has stolen a rare and almost certainly genuine letter written by William Shakespeare, and she desperately needs to find out who and why. So begins an adventure, written in the spirit of Conan Doyles original Holmes stories, that will captivate fans of the worlds greatest consulting detective. Grant (a pseudonym) is a skilled storyteller, giving Wilson a narrative voice that reminds us of Dr. Watson, without ever parodying him. A first-class sequel and, readers will hope, merely the second of a long series of novels.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)