Sherlock Holmes and the Eisendorf Enigma

Starred review from December 12, 2016
Sherlock Holmes returns to center stage in Millett’s outstanding eighth historical set in Minnesota after playing a supporting role in 2014’s Strongwood. In 1892, Holmes, who was believed to have perished in a struggle with Professor Moriarty, found himself in Bavaria, where he speedily identified a killer called the Monster of Munich, though his quarry escaped. In 1920, the detective, who’s battling emphysema caused by decades of smoking, is about to return to London from a visit to the Mayo Clinic, when he discovers a taunting note under his hotel room door. The anonymous author of the cryptic missive promises him a second chance to catch the Monster of Munich if Holmes will meet him in nearby Eisendorf, a community founded by German immigrants. Before arriving in the eccentric town, Holmes learns of some recent suspicious deaths, which, despite his declining health, he also attempts to solve. Millett does a superb job of portraying Holmes without the familiar Watsonian narration and creating a creepy setting for his inquiries.

A trip to the Mayo Clinic plunges the famed sleuth into an adventure as perilous as the Reichenbach Falls. When shortness of breath threatens even his sedentary retirement occupation of keeping bees in Sussex, Sherlock Holmes has no choice but to consult noted pulmonary expert Dr. Henry Plummer at the equally famed clinic in Minnesota. Plummer's advice is uncompromising: no more three-pipe problems for Holmes. But hard as it is for the detective to give up tobacco, it's even harder to give up the thrill of the chase. So, lured by a letter purporting to be from the Monster of Munich, a killer who littered the English Gardens of that city with corpses 28 years ago, Holmes leaves Rochester for the tiny hamlet of Eisendorf, founded in the early 20th century by Dionisius Eisen as a bastion of freethinking. The population of the town has dwindled to about 40--further reduced by the suspicious deaths of Hans Eisen and Bernhard Krupp--whose lives are dutifully chronicled by archivist Frederick Halbach. But what could simple townsfolk like Peter and Wolfgang Eisen, or Bernhardt's widow Katherine, be hiding? Holmes' quest takes him into uncharted territory as he spends night after night in a cottage behind Halbach's house, determined not to leave Eisendorf until its every secret is revealed. Millett (The Disappearance of Sherlock Holmes, 2012, etc.) offers a novel Holmes: out of his urban element and uncharacteristically (and not always convincingly) caught up in the vagaries of the human heart. Even the flashbacks to Munich can't redeem the American Gothic flavor of this pastiche. COPYRIGHT(1) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.