Customer Reviews

Time for Sherlock Holmes

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

 

 

One might think the master himself were alive and well and still chronicling the adventures of Holmes and Watson, so skillfully has David Dvorkin carried on the tradition. This beautifully crafted pastiche sticks faithfully to the language, flavor and attitude of the original stories. All our old friends are there: Dr. Moriarty, Mrs. Hudson, Mycroft. But there's an elixir of youth, and an interesting bit of time travel, thrown in for good measure. Get this: "Holmes vanished from the Libration Satellite shortly after I managed to get him unseen off the Exeter, his disappearance as unannounced as his coming." And this: "I pondered what I had come to regard as the central problem of immortality: While physically I was as a man in his twenties, and indeed looked much that age....I surprised myself upon occasion with my mental rigidity, my stodginess, and my querulousness." And another quote too good to omit: "I had lived to see my earlier chronicles of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson become world-famous; and yet, since copyright does not last forever and cannot be renewed indefinitely, I was no longer earning royalities." This is good stuff! You'll love it.

One of the better pastiches out there, with an inventive plot involving Holmes, Watson, Moriarty, time travel, atomic explosions, life on Mars, and more. There are a number of slow spots and Dvorkin's style is pedestrian -- and not a convincing replica of the voice of Doyle's Watson -- but all in all an enjoyable read.

Sherlock Holmes meets H G Wells, discovers the secret of immortality, hunts Professor Moriarty across time and space, and manipulates the destiny of mankind, all with the unflinching support of the stalwart Dr. Watson, who is coping with finding and losing the love of his life. "Doyle to Wells to Dvorkin - nice triple play!" - New York Times Book Review "A lot of fun." - The Arizona Republic

I found this book delightful as David Dvorkin lampoons just about everything Holmesian or Sherlockian as well as a smattering of Victorian, modern, post-modern and yes even future and extra-planetary sensibilities. I laughed my way through the first 50 pages and then got interested in the story line. This is a reminiscence so I do not understand the complaints about slowness. David does a superb job of capturing the anomie of perpetual existence over a period of 200+ years. He also does some mind bending and numbing conceptual gymnastics. "Time For Sherlock Holmes" has a rollicking good ending too!

Like jedwardp, I thought this book started quite well and was interesting to read at first, but then declined. The author initially had a good handle on both Holmes and Watson, and some intriguing ideas. But as the book progressed, the characters became more like vehicles for the plot than like "real" people. Dvorkin even seemed to forget about some of the questions raised in the earlier parts of the book. For example (without giving too much away), when Watson first meets Lily, he wonders about her family, but doesn't get a chance to ask. Given how much time the two of them end up spending together, surely he got a chance at some point to ask--and we should've seen his reaction to the information. But the matter is essentially dropped. Characters sometimes changed without much explanation--apparently more because the plot required them to do so than for any other reason. It's rather a shame that the book didn't focus more on the people, their motivations, and their reactions to what was happening.

Time for Sherlock Holmes places the unforgettable characters of Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson in a science fiction time travel adventure in the tradition of H.G. Wells and Poul Anderson. You won't regret this purchase.