Sherlock Holmes and Frankenstein's Diary

May 6, 2013
The pseudonymous Grant’s overly busy fourth mystery featuring a revived Sherlock Holmes (after 2012’s Sherlock Holmes and the Swedish Enigma) takes Holmes and his Watsonian sidekick, James Wilson, on a mission for Scotland Yard to Switzerland, where Holmes was frozen for nearly a century in a glacier. Holmes and Wilson visit Dr. Jan Droon, a mad scientist complete with an Igor-like assistant, at his Swiss chalet. Dr. Droon, who despairs of man’s murderous nature, wants “to create a new man, a new life form!” To demonstrate his theories, he tortures a caged ape with a blowtorch. This over-the-top encounter may be related to a hacking scandal the Baker Street duo investigate involving tabloid newspaper magnate Gerald Gurloch. As befits the 21st-century setting, the diary of the title turns out to be a blog by a hacker. Grant does give Holmes scope to demonstrate his deductive brilliance, but the disparate plot elements fail to gel. Agent: Al Longden, Albert Longden Associates.

July 1, 2013
The world's greatest detective confronts a Rupert Murdoch-like adversary. Now thawed after years embedded in a Swiss glacier, Holmes is approached by Andrew Swann to investigate the biggest ongoing crime in Britain: the suppression of animal rights and the subversion of human democracy. Swann's father, who retired after a career in Fleet Street, created the Rabbit Underground, an animal rights activist group whose legislative efforts have been squelched by media titan Gerald Gurloch. Gurloch's fortune, which began with slaughterhouses and expanded to salacious tabloids, cybermalfeasance and political bribery, is now dedicated to three goals: Kill Sherlock Holmes, blow up Nelson's Column and defame the queen. To achieve these ends, Gurloch buys up a Caribbean island from which to conduct nefarious enterprises. He hacks into Google and Scotland Yard's files, putting pressure on Lestrade's grandson, also a detective inspector, to resign. He corrupts Nigel Greenwood, current head of the Metropolitan Police. And he may just be underwriting professor Droon's experiments on apes. Just what he has to do with the quiet deaths of Lord North and Sylvia Swann has yet to be proved. The quest to do so sends Holmes' amanuensis, journalist James Wilson, scampering overseas and Holmes himself reconnoitering the Swiss Alps in his Aston Martin. Disguises come into play, as does a bit of code-breaking, the bickering of Gurloch's twin daughters, Google-hacking under the nom de blog Black Swan and a master criminal's gift of Dr. Watson's little tin box of unpublished Holmes stories to Wilson. The denouement, which saves Lestrade's job, defeats Gurloch and solves all the murders, finds Holmes facing his third deadly skirmish with death in peaceful Switzerland. Sherlock-ians, as is their wont, may quibble, but lovers of ratiocination (Sherlock Holmes and the Swedish Enigma, 2012, etc.) will have a field day.

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May 15, 2013
The story so far: Sherlock Holmes, the world's most famous consulting detective, long presumed dead, was unfrozen from a glacier in the modern day; with his new sidekick, journalist James Wilson, Holmes continues to solve crimes whose mind-boggling nature only he can penetrate. This time out, the apparent murder of an animal-rights activist leads Holmes and Wilson into a devilishly complex plot involving a widely disliked media mogul (an obvious stand-in for Rupert Murdoch) and a scientist whose research is either cutting edge or certifiably insane, depending on your point of view. Grant never plays these stories for laughs, although, as with Conan Doyle's originals, there is humor in them. This fourth in the series comes closest to spoofing the source material, but it never quite gets there, remaining, like its predecessors, a nicely written, cleverly constructed mystery starring a character that genuinely feels like the original S. Holmes, albeit in modern dress. Fans of the abundance of Holmes spin-offs and tie-ins will definitely want to check this series out, if they haven't already.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)