Holmes on the Range [Hardcover]

Steve Hockensmith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 7, 2006

Because 1893 is a tough year in Montana, any job is a good job. When Big Red and Old Red Amlingmeyer sign on as ranch hands at the secretive Bar VR cattle spread, they're not expecting much more than hard work, bad pay, and a comfortable campfire around which they can enjoy their favorite pastime: scouring Harper's Weekly for stories about the famous Sherlock Holmes.

When the boys come across a dead body that looks a whole lot like the leftovers of an unfortunate encounter with a cattle stampede, Old Red sees the perfect opportunity to employ his Holmes-inspired deducifyin' skills. Putting his ranch work squarely on the back burner, he sets out to solve the case. Big Red, like it or not (and mostly he does not), is along for the wild ride in this clever, compelling, and completely one-of-a-kind mystery.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Sherlockians, western fans and mystery lovers who enjoy their whodunits leavened with humor should all be delighted by Hockensmith's captivating debut, which features Montana cowboys and brothers Gustav and Otto Amlingmeyer (better known as Old Red and Big Red, respectively). One night in 1892, Old Red becomes smitten with Sherlock Holmes on hearing his brother read "The Red-Headed League" around the campfire during a cattle drive. Determined to follow in his hero's footsteps, Old Red gets the chance to apply the master's methods after some unsavory characters hire the pair to work at a ranch, whose general manager is soon found dead after a stampede. Another man turns up dead, apparently a suicide, just before the British aristocrats who own the ranch arrive to inspect their property. The melding of genres will remind some of the late Bill DeAndrea's western Nero Wolfe pastiches, while the skillful plotting and characterization augur well for the sequel. Hockensmith writes a monthly column for Alfred Hitchcock's Mystery Magazine.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

*Starred Review* The Amlingmeyer brothers--Big Red, our narrator, and Old Red--grabbed a job at the mysterious Bar-VR Ranch to avoid a winter without food or money. One of the hands at the ranch is found with a bullet in his brain and another ends up seemingly trampled, but no one can recall a stampede. The shadowy miscreants had best watch their backs, however, as the Amlingmeyers are not your ordinary cowpokes. Old Red can't read but has been entertained trailside by Big Red's reading Sherlock Holmes stories from Harper's Weekly. Old Red thus considers himself a budding master of what he calls "deducifyin'." With Old Red as a six-gun Holmes and Big Red as a skeptical, nervous Watson, the pair ferrets out the killers and motives from a colorful cast of characters with names such as Puddin-Foot, Tall John, and Swivel-Eye. The Amlingmeyers have graced the pages of Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine, and their initial book-length case is every bit as memorable. At times, they may remind readers of Joe Lansdale's Hap Collins and Leonard Pine with their smart mouths, penchant for trouble, and unflagging loyalty to each other. This is a great reworking of the Holmes conceit, and one suspects Hockensmith will have a steady readership as long as the Amlingmeyers are on the case. Wes Lukowsky
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 304 pages
• Publisher: Minotaur Books; 1st edition (February 7, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0312347804
• ISBN-13: 978-0312347802
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (51 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,341,983 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

As you might have guessed by now, I'm a writer. Most authors are, in fact (with the possible exception of Snooki). As a writer, it is my obligation to spend large portions of my day sitting in front of a computer in ketchup-stained sweatpants while swilling enough coffee each hour to drown a chihuahua. This I cheerfully do. Occasionally, I even write something. Via this time-tested method of sitting, drinking coffee and writing, I have managed to produce several novels. Some people think they're pretty good. I will now fill the rest of my allotted space with quotes from positive reviews. Sorry. To make it more fun for everyone, I've slipped one fake review in with the real ones. See if you can spot it!

"Grade: A-...hilarious...delightfully offbeat...." --Entertainment Weekly on Holmes on the Range

"Other books and TV series have featured genre-melding cowboys armed with ratiocination as well as revolvers, but Hockensmith's take is quite special. There's his combination of intriguing mystery, breathless action, colorful characters and enough laugh-out-loud moments for the book to fit in the humorous crime category." --The Los Angeles Times on The Black Dove

"Hockensmith takes a concept that could have been terrible -- the backstory of the Bennet girls learning to fight the undead, setting the stage for Pride and Prejudice and Zombies -- and turns it into a gory and gross, wonderful and clever tale...a true delight, really." --Romantic Times on Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls

"Hulk hate silly things puny humans call 'books.' Hulk smash The Da Vinci Code! Hulk smash puny Harry Potter! But Hockensmith books pretty good. Hulk no smash. Hulk want more sequels." --The Incredible Hulk on The Crack in the Lens

To learn more about me, go to http://www.stevehockensmith.com. To learn more about the Incredible Hulk and his taste in literature, go to http://www.marvel.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Just Plain Fun, March 17, 2006

By 

Richard A. Mitchell "Rick Mitchell" (candia, new hampshire United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Holmes on the Range (Hardcover)

This book makes the reader smile on every page. It is not laugh out loud funny, but consistently amusing throughout. The narrator, one of the two brothers who are at the center of the yarn, is a comedian - if he does say so himself.

The Amlinger brothers, Big Red (narrator) and Old Red, are cowboys. Big Red has read Sherlock Holmes stories to his older brother who can not read and Old Red has taken them to heart. The brothers go to work on a ranch known for its nefarious bosses. A body is found. Apparently, the man was killed in a stampede. Old Red doubts it and the Holmesian hunt is on...Old Red goes deducifyin'.

This is a true mix of a western and a Sherlock Holmes type Mystery. Mr. Hockensmith catches the flavor of both tremendously with just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek attitude so the depiction of neither genre is "over the top". There are more amusing, and apt, metaphors in this book than any other I have ever read. They were amusing to read and I found myself looking forward to the next one, which was never a long wait.

The characters, especially the brothers are very good. The supporting cast varies from drovers to evil foremen to an English duke, who, of course has met Holmes and hates him, and a damsel.

Lastly, the plot was a good one. Like Holmes, Old Red is always a step ahead of his brother/Watson and the reader. He, of course, wraps it all up in the end.

There are a number of Holmes knock-offs and books about Holmes after retirement, etc. out there. This is not one. Holmes is merely Old Red's hero. Mr. Hockensmith then concocts a Holmes-like mystery told in a western twang. Holmes fans will not be offended since he is only an inspiration to this amateur sleuth.

Highly recommended. This is a decent mystery that light-heartedly combines the features of Sherlock Holmes and dime westerns.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sherlock Holmes inspired Old West mystery, April 30, 2006

By 

Cory D. Slipman (Rockville Centre, N.Y.) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Holmes on the Range (Hardcover)

Steve Hockensmith's debut novel "Holmes on the Range" is an amusing Conan Doyle inspired mystery set in the untamed frontier of 1893 Montana. The book chronicles the exploits of the Amlingmeyer brothers Gustav and Otto, known as Old Red and Big Red. The brothers were itinerant cowboys, a result of a series of tragedies that wiped out their entire German immigrant family in rural Kansas. Before flood waters and smallpox decimated the Amlingmeyer family, the illiterate Gustav set out to make a living as a cow puncher. The younger Otto, the narrator of this tale, received some education and worked as a granary clerk. A resulting flood wiped out the whole family, save Otto, who joined up with his brother on the range.

They were currently employed as dollar a day cowhands on the Bar VR cattle ranch in Montana. When they accidently came across the apparently stampeded body of what was believed to be the ranch manager named Perkins, curiosity got the better of them. Gustav, a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes, began to investigate the death in typical Holmes fashion looking for clues.

The ranch was now being run by a pair of unsavory and underhanded brothers the McPhersons, Uly and Spider. The ranch soon became the locus of a new wider array of suspects into the strange occurrences at the ranch. The owner of the ranch, the English Duke of Balmoral arrived with his entourage just days after the unfortunate demise of the manager Perkins. This arrival was soon followed by the shooting death of top ranch hand Boudreaux, an albino Negro, under some very queer circumstances.

Old Red (Gustav) aided by Big Red (Otto) were allowed to shirk their ranch duties by the Duke in order to investigate the crimes. The Duke, an inveterate gambler had as his motivation, a 200 pound wager he made with his young associate Brackwell, son of an English earl. The Duke bet that Old Red and Big Red couldn't provide a plausible explanation for the mysterious deaths before the arrival of the authorities.

Using Holmesian deductive reasoning the Amlingmeyer brothers eventually found the answers to the mysteries on the Bar VR ranch. Author Hockensmith has a bright future should he continue to write about the exploits of Old Red and Big Red.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Pretty Decent Debut, I Reckon, March 19, 2007

By 

Mark Baker (Santa Clarita, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Holmes on the Range (Paperback)

Old Red and Big Red are the last two members of their family. With nothing to tie them down, the brothers drift from place to place looking for work.

That's how they come to find themselves in Montana during the winter of 1893. Times are hard and the two are reduced to waiting out the winter hoping to get hired once spring round up starts.

But one day, the foreman of the Bar VR ranch offers them jobs. Despite the rumors of something mysterious happening there, the two take the jobs.

Or maybe it is because of the rumors. See, Old Red has recently heard some of the stories about Sherlock Holmes and has become enthralled with the idea of solving a case of his own.

The brothers arrive with the other men hired at the time and find themselves confined to the area around the massive ranch house. But Old Red still finds every excuse he can to sniff out clues. But when the ranch manager dies in a stampede, it looks like he'll have a chance to truly play detective.

No matter what else is said about this book, you've got to admit it is fun. The brothers are wonderful characters and their relationship brings plenty of laughs, as does Big Red's narration. The plot gets a little bogged down in the middle, but everything does come together for a compelling climax. And what a cast of characters - you've got English nobility, a wannabe cowboy, real cowboys, and a Swedish chef. The book does contain more foul language then I normally like, and I could have done without the fart jokes. But they only dampened my enjoyment slightly.

This book easily blurs genre lines. If you enjoy Westerns or mysteries, you'll enjoy it.