Customer Reviews

The Flying Scotsman (A Mycroft Holmes Novel)

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In the Sherlock Holmes stories, Conan Doyle gave us just a taste of espionage, those stories that took him to his brother's club, involving naval treaties and submarine plans. Chesterton gave us one really good spy novel- The Man Who Was Thursday, then went on to produce his famous Father Brown. In both cases, Espionage's loss was Mystery's gain. But for those who love foreign intrique and the Victorian Era, there's no place like Holmes...when it's Mycroft Holmes, and his assistant, Guthrie. In this, the third in the series, Holmes and Guthrie must guard the royal heir to the Swedish throne, or allow England to lose face in international circles. But the Brotherhood is back, and noone is certain just how many assassins are trying to kill the young prince. Mycroft arranges for decoys, and he and Guthrie accompany the heir aboard England's most elegant train. It isn't long before the bodies fall, and Guthrie receives the first of many cuts and scrapes. Spies, trains, and Victorian elegance. What more could a reader want?

Unlike his more famous younger brother Sherlock, Mycroft Holmes prefers to work in the shadows where no public acclaim occurs. He enjoys working for His Majesty's government insuring the welfare of the empire. Countless times he has saved his country from a loss of power and influence, and from needless embarrassments. His most formidable opponent is The Brotherhood whose vision is to insure Germany becomes the most powerful European nation.

Mycroft loathes his current assignment because it places him under public scrutiny. He and his assistant must attend the wedding of the Duke of Marlborough to Queen Victoria,s grand niece. All of Europe's noble class will attend. Mycroft sees the gathering as an opportunity to negotiate a treaty with guest Prince Oscar of Sweden and Norway. Britain will help develop the Scandinavian nation,s rail system in exchange for access to North Sea ports. If agreed, Germany's control of North Sea would shrink. Germany, led by the Brotherhood prefer Oscar,s brother to rule Sweden and Norway as he seems more sympathetic to their needs. Assassination attempts of Prince Oscar leaves Mycroft and Guthrie risking their lives to insure his safe passage home.

THE FLYING SCOTSMAN will have appeal to a broad band of fans. Readers who enjoy a historical mystery or espionage thriller will relish this tale. Quinn Fawcett, author of two previous Mycroft tales (see AGAINST THE BROTHERHOOD and EMBASSY ROAD) keeps his story line within the wonderful world described by Doyle. Yet, the depth of detail adds to the overall authentic feel of the late Victorian age. The pompous Mycroft handles the weight of the British Empire on his shoulders with aplomb that makes him a fantastic character and his novels very entertaining.

Harriet Klausner

Unlike many who have "reviewed" this book prior - this is NOT a Sherlock Holmes novel. It is, however, a great piece of work, painstakingly documenting period England and quite entertaining. Shame so many think because Mycroft appears so stodgy and sedentary in the canon that there can't be more than meets the eye. I daresay someone described as Mycroft is by Holmes and Watson wouldn't remain in a high government position long! It's also clear they weren't close. So let it go. Enjoy the read!

The characters are totally unlike any from the classic Conan Doyle series, only the Holmes name has allowed this work to fester on. And fester on it does, if edited from novel to a short story, it would still be poor, just less tedious to plow through.

Elegant whodunit against a colorful background. I deducted one star because the character of Micah Holcomb and Poirot-style confrontation in the lounge car were over the top. Now I regret sleeping through a similar journey in 1975.

I just want to reinforce the value of Rory Coker's review. This is one of the only books in my life which I have stopped reading IN THE MIDDLE. Thats how bad it is. The situations are preposterous, and, to true Holmes fans, the character of Mycroft is nothing like the all knowing, all powerful, but never moving figure from the Canon. Avoid at all costs - life's too short!!

This seems to be the fourth in a series about someone called Mycroft Holmes (but having no real relation to the character created by Conan Doyle) as "edited" by Quinn Fawcett and as told by Mycroft's colorless assistant Guthrie. It is the only book in the series I have read and will certainly forevermore remain the one and only. Had I the inductive skills of Conan Doyle's Sherlock and Mycroft, I would have put the book back on the bookstore shelves as soon as I noticed that all the reviewers' blurbs on the flyleaf and back cover are from publications of the Western East Podunk Grain and Corn Bulletin sort.

Well, what we have is an almost completely plotless 320 pages, in which the author carefully describes every scrap of food and sip of liquid that goes into Mycoft's mouth, but never finds time to create characters, situations or developments that would be of any interest to the long-suffering reader. The books most similar to this one that I have seen are the Irene Adler novels of Carol Nelson Douglas, in which there are 50 pages of descriptions of Irene's outfits for every paragraph in which Irene wonders idly who killed the little Paris seamstress about 200 pages back, and why.

Mycroft himself seems to have no real job, and spends his time eating, fretting in a distant, avuncular way, and sending and receiving telegrams which never amount to anything. In this particular novel, someone of questionable judgement has chosen Mycroft to organize getting the friendly Scandinavian Prince Oscar safely out of England, before an international incident is created by having him assassinated on English soil. The novel takes place in a completely imaginary and relentlessly superficial world, connected in no way to the sociopolitical realities of 1890. Instead, we have two gigantic, global and preposterously efficient forces for evil, the Brotherhood and the Golden Lodge. Unlike vaguely similar organizations in our real world, whose members have trouble finding their shoes, pistols and computers in the morning, the organizations Mycroft faces here are always 30 steps ahead of him, even when he has only just decided what to do. Thus he and his two aides, Guthrie and Tyers, are always reacting, never acting. Not that much happens that they need to react to, as there is virtually no action.

I got the feeling that the book is a first draft, and that the author never had time to go back and decide what to do with certain sequences. For example, there is an interminable early chapter in which Mycroft gets Chief Inspector Somerford drunk over dinner, and questions him apparently to some point, but no point ever develops and the Inspector in fact never appears in the novel again! On the Flying Scotsman, Mycroft identifies a passenger as being crudely disguised to appear to be a printer, though there would be absolutely no point to such an impersonation, but later the passenger is (correctly) found to be a bookie, and the ink and chalk stains Mycroft referred to earlier are not part of a disguise, but rather the normal appearance of a bookie who has boarded the train in haste without time to clean up. Or, again, the assassin aboard the train is the one person who could not possibly be the assassin, and the only murder he does commit has no point and is never explained. In fact, the novel ends as if the author had simply reached the proper page count. It is fair to say that 80% of the questions raised during the novel's course, uninteresting as they may be, are not answered, or even brought up again. They are just there to expend ink and pages.

So I wouldn't advise expending your hard-earned funds in this particular case.