Customer Reviews

The Headless Monk (Sherlock Holmes Tales of Terror #2)

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Like 'The Curse of the Pharaohs', the first book in this series, this book suffers from a Holmes willing to believe in the supernatural, a fairly limited plot (although better this time than last), and a Christian homily at the end (which, again, is more in tune with the book than the last time).

Holmes is called in to investigate the sighting a the ghost of a headless monk on an island, one of a pair of islands, the other of which contains a lighthouse, its keeper and his family. While legends of the ghost have been heard for some time, the effect of sighting the ghost on the lighthouse keeper's wife is extreme. Once they are there, Homes and Watson discover that there are a number of other events which must be understood to correctly resolve the mystery.

This story is an attempt to tell the tale of the politician, the lighthouse and the trained cormorant, mentioned in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's 'The Adventure of the Veiled Lodger'. It fails to do so successfully as Kel Richards fails to address the fact that, in that story, Watson threatens to reveal that story due to attempts made to destroy his case papers, and that at least one reader would understand. I can't explain why not without detailing the story completely, but suffice to say it does not.