The Baker Street Letters [Hardcover]

Michael Robertson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 23, 2009

First in a spectacular new series about two brother lawyers who lease offices on London’s Baker Street--and begin receiving mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes

In Los Angeles, a geological surveyor maps out a proposed subway route--and then goes missing. His eight-year-old daughter, in her desperation, turns to the one person she thinks might help--she writes a letter to Sherlock Holmes.

That letter creates an uproar at 221b Baker Street, which now houses the law offices of attorney and man about town Reggie Heath and his hapless brother, Nigel. Instead of filing the letter like he’s supposed to, Nigel decides to investigate. Soon he’s flying off to Los Angeles, inconsiderately leaving a very dead body on the floor in his office. Big brother Reggie follows Nigel to California, as does Reggie’s sometime lover, Laura---a quick-witted stage actress who’s captured the hearts of both brothers.

When Nigel is arrested, Reggie must use all his wits to solve a case that Sherlock Holmes would have savored and Sir Arthur Conan Doyle fans will adore.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Robertson's engaging debut, the first in a projected series, offers one of the more original premises involving the Sherlock Holmes character. London solicitor Reggie Heath, who's just leased office space on Baker Street, finds his obligations include making sure letters addressed to Sherlock Holmes at 221B are answered, if with formulaic replies. After a senior clerk is bludgeoned to death and Heath's younger ne'er-do-well brother disappears, the lawyer suspects both events are connected to a letter an eight-year-old girl, Mara Ramirez, sent nearly 20 years earlier asking the great detective to locate her missing father. Heath follows the trail to Los Angeles, where he succeeds in tracking down Mara and learns current crimes may be connected with her father's disappearance. Readers will want to spend more time with the appealing Heath and company, but the conceit of having future mysteries to solve based on letters to Baker Street may be hard to sustain. (June)
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From Booklist

It’s a well-known and rather curious fact that some people write letters to fictional characters, that fictional creations can become so real that someone can actually believe they exist. Robertson, a first-time author, takes that premise and runs with it. Brothers Reggie and Nigel Heath are a couple of London lawyers whose offices are located in the 200 block of Baker Street. Their lease requires them to answer all letters addressed to Sherlock Holmes, 221B Baker Street. Nigel opens one such letter, and soon he’s gone, disappeared, leaving behind a dead body and a whole lot of confusion. Next thing you know, Reggie is on a plane to Los Angeles, tracking down his brother and solving a decades-old mystery. This is a very entertaining novel, lighthearted but with a solid story, and mystery fans, whether they’re Sherlock Holmes addicts or not, will thoroughly enjoy it. The book is billed as the first entry in a new series, and, judging by this installment, it should be a popular series indeed. --David Pitt

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books (June 23, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 031253812X
• ISBN-13: 978-0312538125
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (23 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,086,774 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars 5-star premise; 3-star execution, July 31, 2009

By 

S. McGee (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Baker Street Letters (Hardcover)

It's a great idea -- that one of the modern office buildings that now occupy the space on the northernmost stretch of Baker Street where Sherlock Holmes once hung his deerstalker hat now has an obligation to respond to letters addressed to the great detective at 221B Baker Street, a century or so after his battles with criminals like the infamous Moriarty were last published. In this detective novel, which is far more cozy than Holmesian, the duty of replying to that correspondence (with a form letter) falls to a law firm run by Reggie Heath; the duty is discharged by his brother, Nigel, waiting to be reinstated with the law society after some well-intended deeds had unexpected consequences. Nigel, it seems, hasn't learned his lesson, as the exasperated Reggie realizes early in the book, when Nigel fails to show up at his reinstatement hearing. He's somehow become unduly fascinated with the Holmes correspondence, and has dashed off to Los Angeles to help an 8-year-old girl who wrote a letter pleading for help finding her father more than a decade earlier. The problem? Not only does making direct contact with these letter writers violate the terms of the Heath lease, but Nigel has left a dead body behind in his office, brained with his prize Remington sculpture.

The concept is great fun, but the plotting and writing skills fall short of what is needed to pull this off. There are some very obvious plot devices, as Reggie goes chasing after Nigel to retrieve him, only to stumble headlong into more mystery and murder. Robertson seems to be trying to emulate the style of Alexander McCall Smith's excellent Mma Ramotswe mystery stories, but Robertson's characters never appealed to me as much -- they never felt as vivid or alive as McCall Smith's, just self-consciously quirky. The writing is pedestrian and too often clunky and uneven. When Reggie discovers Nigel's disappearance, he sees a group of people clustered around his brother's office, peers in through its window and sees chaos: file cabinet drawers hanging by their hinges, books on the floor and papers everywhere. "Nigel had gone off again," is all that Robertson can muster in terms of an insight into Reggie's state of mind. Wow, no kidding. The intent could be to make the reader see Reggie's limited emotional range, but if so, it doesn't work. Robertson hasn't mastered irony or nuance. The plot may be an intriguing one, but I found myself having to work to follow it. The requisite twists and turns in the mystery didn't always work well, either -- no spoilers here, except to say that the presence of later and possibly forged letters from the young girl, Mara Ramirez, is introduced in the earliest pages and then not raised again for more than 100 pages, even though that seems to be at the hub of the mystery. There are too many loose ends left to dangle for too long to make this work for me as a mystery reader.

I don't think fans of Sherlock Holmes (or his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle) will get as big a charge from the book's contents as they will from the premise. It might appeal to readers who enjoy cozy mysteries, although I wouldn't rank it among the best offerings in that genre, either. Mystery fans who favor "cozies" may still find something to enjoy if they're looking for something a bit different, but I'd strongly suggest finding a library copy or at least waiting until it's out in paperback. For my part, I'm off to re-read the original Sherlock Holmes mysteries, to remind myself of Conan Doyle's skill with character and plot.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars An Okay Book, September 4, 2009

By 

Lover of Books (Eagan, MN United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Baker Street Letters (Hardcover)

Mr. Robertson has an interesting premise but it seems to fall flat at times. A letter from an eight year old girl who writes to Sherlock Holmes seems a little odd at first. I took a little believability to question the fact that someone would write to a fictional character. Yet the dialogue and the story line flows fairly well.

I found Nigel to be reckless and down right annoying at times. Reggie was just trying to piece everything together. There were times that he even began to question what he was doing in America. Doubting the main reason for being there and wondering if he could help his brother out of the hole he had dug himself into. The side characters were there but never really seemed to bring the novel forward much.

An interesting premise yet it lacked something. I really liked it but the ending seemed rushed. I liked how all the pieces did finally fit together. I was pleasantly surprised with the lengths the criminals went to keep the secrets buried. A little over the top at times, but I was curious what the author had for the motives behind it all. I expected a lot more out of this book than what I got. It wasn't a book I felt I had to read just had hoped for more than what I got in the end.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Very Disappointing Read, May 3, 2011

By 

Beverly L. Archer "Booklady123" (Colorado Springs, CO) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Baker Street Letters (Hardcover)

The premise for this book had such great potential, unfortunately the writing just didn't meet that great potential. I found the actual story to be very boring. Clues appeared in awkward places. I'm surprised that I actually finished the book as I found that I not only did not care for the characters or really about the solution to the mystery. I was very disappointed as I was hoping for a good contemporary mystery with a tie-in to Sherlock Holmes.