Customer Reviews

Son of Holmes (Auguste Lupa)

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

 

 

Other reviewers have not fully enjoyed this book because they are looking for satisfaction as a post Holmes story. It is more an early Nero Wolfe story - "Auguste Lupa" is the backstory referred to by Nero Wolfe in several of the Rex Stout novels. Here he is young and fit, not yet corpulent but displaying his trademark love of food, beer and horticulture. The cook, Fritz Benet is obviously the WWI identity of Fritz Brenner, Nero Wolfe's chef and housekeeper.

There are many treats here for Rex Stout fans - Auguste Lupa's designing a remote signaling device to have beer fetched to him, his mistrust of women, using an intelligent legman to gather facts for him to decipher and of course gathering all the players for the unmasking of the criminal.

As a standalone mystery it would be only a couple of stars, but as biographical fodder for Nero Wolfe, it is "very satisfactory".

I have to agree with the reader who found this novel trite and dull. I got very very tired of hearing about nothing but beer in every other sentence. I did slog on to the bitter end, but expected so much more of Lescroart, as other novels I have read were engrossing and fairly literate. I picked this book up because my husband is a die-hard Holmes fan. I told him not to bother. Reading this would just make him angry.

Really. Don't bother. I'm half through, there's been one murder, and I still can't stop wondering when something is going to happen -- other than everyone walking around town, drinking beer. This guy gets paid for writing????

Having read many of the author's Dismas Hardy novels, I was intrigued to find this little novel. Set in W.W.I. France, this book revolves around a murder and wartime espionage. The case is investigated by the reputed son of Sherlock Holmes. The ending is classic English-style, "let's go in a room and reveal the killer." A welcome departure full of a sense of place.

After I finished this, immediately turned the book over and looked again at the blurbs. Belatedly realize that most of them praise Lescroart for his body of work rather than this novel in particular, and the rest (like "fans of Holmes will appreciate the detective's influence on this story") smack of having been plucked from reviews that were decidedly more tepid. I now feel a little better about having walked away from the tale distinctly underwhelmed. I found the plot to be dull and formulaic, the characters crudely drawn and uninteresting, the mystery not very mysterious (chances are you'll figure out who-done-it well before the end), and the denoument - in which the detective gathers all the suspects in a room in order to reveal the identity of the killer (even Doyle managed to avoid that hoariest of mystery cliches!) - had all the suspense of an episode of Monk.

Mostly I was puzzled why Lescroart even bothered with the "gimmick" of presenting the detective, Lupa, as the son of Holmes. Don't get me wrong: I'm grateful that he resists the urge to conjure up some grotesque pastiche of the original, complete with an addiction to pipe tobacco, violin music, and cocaine. However, the main character (Lupa) channels so little of his purported father's brilliance, wit, or eccentricity, I find myself wondering why Lescroat bothered establishing a relationship in the first place. Perhaps because being able to evoke Holmes in the title of a book still, even in this day and age, guarantees a certain level of reader attention?

If one is to believe the blurbs, Lescroat has some talent as an author and I may one day attempt something else by him. However, this outing has left me unimpressed.

"Son of Holmes" is based in a small French town just after WWI broke out. Auguste Lupa is the supposed son of Sherlock Holmes (its always hinted at, but never confirmed). Lupa must discover, with the help of a French agent, the murderer of a crime. The murderer turns out to want to disrupt France's war effort.

With brillant plot, brillant characters, and a wonderfully done setting, this book of Lescroart should be reprinted and stay in print. You will not find a better book set in WWI.

It's a pretty good story, but the plot is very slow. In Conan Doyle's novels there was a lot of deduction from the beginning to the end of each story. In this book, everything clears up in the last chapter... so the rest of the book is pretty slow paced: there's action but no idea of where Lupa's (Holmes son) getting at.

This book was OK. Was a chore to finish, but I can see where someone else could enjoy it. I think my problem was I was expecting a story similar to his San Francisco law story's

I am a big fan of Sherlockiana and Conan Doyle pastiches, and this book started out promisingly with the requisite prologue explaining the genesis of the manuscript at a "Martha Hudson dinner" in an academic suburb of Boston. Even the preface was a clever touch, "All the events in this book are true, despite the disclaimer which you have just read ...." I was eager to proceed!

Unfortunately, when the focus shifts to the story itself, set in rural France during WWI, it lost all focus for me. I have spent over a week dragging through this tale a page or two at a time. The prose is wooden, which can be forgiven in a piece of Holmesiana if the plot is grabbing, but that plot is sparse and slow to develop. Doyle would have done this in a short story. There isn't much in the way of character development to fill in, either. The writing and plot seem disjoint. For instance, the narrator describes one character, Tania, as (something like) 'the only woman he had ever truly loved', yet this love is not _shown_ in their relationship (which seemed a very Gallic accomodation of convenience). So, just short of halfway through, I shall admit defeat and place this one aside.

This one of the worst Holmes offshoots I have (tried to) read.

This was a great read, from the introduction to the end....Lescroart gave Lupa enough of his "father" but still keeping a sensible distance as to not create a clone. I just purchased Rasputin's Revenge, and I'm looking forward to reading it! I hope you continue to write more A. Lupa stories!