Customer Reviews

The Glendower Conspiracy: A Memoir of Sherlock Holmes (Brown Bag Mystery)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Watson is replaced by a personal assistant to Holmes. A promising idea but he seems to have very little personality. Lots of seemingly irrelevant detail that isn't put into any perspective. The assistant is sent to Wales to help investigate a case and seems to treat it as a vacation, making a travel log describing the scenery and looking more into the history of Wales than the case. There's a remark at one point about a character being a "frustrated historian" that seems applicable to the author. No doubt it eventually gets back to the story, but the book is rather long and I gave up about a third of the way through.

A rather interesting book but which lacks very much the Watson touch. A bit too much of that Porter young man at the beginning of the story and maybe too much of geographic and architectural details. The use of Welsh names gives a good notion of "dépaysement" and allowed me to note the strong similitudes between this Gaelic langage and the Breton one, my own native land.

Although the idea of Holmes taking on an apprentice is a rewarding difference from other Holmes mysteries, it seems as though he (Porter) hasn't accomplished anything by the time Holmes has arrived. Many elaborate details give a good idea of what the land looks like but almost made me forget what the case was. All in all a relativly good story.

Lloyd Biggle, who has done some spectacularly odd SF works (see 'The Still, Small Voice of Trumpets'), has shined Sherlock's eye over the poverty-stricken subnation of Wales, roughly a century ago. Holmes' companion (not Dr. Watson, who couldn't make this trip) tells us richly of the milieu, and Holmes finds the most telling clues right in plain sight. The rural Welsh characters are as real as Dickens' London townsfolk, and just as pinched. I loved it! Watson didn't write the tales this well...