{"id":436,"date":"2012-01-30T23:54:41","date_gmt":"2012-01-31T05:54:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=436"},"modified":"2012-01-30T23:54:41","modified_gmt":"2012-01-31T05:54:41","slug":"graham-moore-the-sherlockian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/graham-moore-the-sherlockian\/","title":{"rendered":"Graham Moore: The Sherlockian"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/form>\n

This was a blast of a read, one that can be enjoyed by the non Sherlock Holmes fan as much as the devotee.\u00a0 While Laurie King\u2019s Mary Russell books focus on a young girl meeting Holmes as an old man, this novel focuses on a young Sherlockian in the present who is on the lookout for the Holy Grail of any Sherlockian: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle\u2019s missing diary.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>While Laurie King\u2019s books are set firmly in the past, Moore instead alternates chapters.\u00a0 One plot thread is set in the present, and focuses on Harold, the newest member of the Baker Street Irregulars.\u00a0 The other thread is set in Victoria\u2019s London, and features Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who, sick to death of Holmes, is instead trying to write \u201crealistic\u201d fiction after killing Holmes off.<\/p>\n

As Doyle makes his way around the streets of London he finds himself both reviled for killing off Holmes, and revered for creating him in the first place.\u00a0 Anywhere he goes it\u2019s clear he\u2019s one of the first celebrities, as ordinary folks talk to him about Holmes as though he were a real person.\u00a0 Much to Doyle\u2019s disgust.<\/p>\n

The brilliance of Graham Moore\u2019s conceit is not totally clear until towards the end of the novel, but the set up of the story has the virtue of being both original and entertaining, not so caught up in it\u2019s own cleverness that the author forgot to tell a good story.\u00a0 In this case, two stories.<\/p>\n

The story involving Harold and the Baker Street Irregulars focuses on the annual gathering at the Algonquin Hotel in New York of the Irregulars, as they await the unveiling of the lost diary by one of the more respected members of the society.\u00a0 As they wait and wait for this man to show up and his \u201creveal\u201d to begin, he of course doesn\u2019t show, and he\u2019s discovered dead in his hotel room.<\/p>\n

Harold, who wears a deerstalker cap as a matter of course, is one of the folks who goes up to look for the missing man.\u00a0 When he and a reporter named Sarah and another member of the Irregulars find the body, Harold snaps into Holmes persona, searching the room for clues before the police arrive.\u00a0 Sure enough, he finds one, a very Holmes-ian one.\u00a0 This clue sets Harold on the path of finding both the man\u2019s killer and the missing diary (for of course it\u2019s not in the hotel room), a task commissioned by none other than Sebastian Conan Doyle, grandson of the great man.\u00a0 Before you know it, Harold is off to London with Sarah.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile Holmes and his pal Bram Stoker, who toils as a theater manager, are on the lookout for the person who slipped a bomb through Doyle\u2019s letter box, almost blowing up his family.\u00a0 This makes Doyle so angry he goes to Scotland Yard; and when he finds little activity there, he sets out himself to unravel the crime, one that leads him not just to a bomber, but toward a series of murders of young women.<\/p>\n

As both Doyle and Harold work as amateur detectives, in everything they apply Holmes\u2019s methods of logic, reason and deduction to arrive at a solution.\u00a0 And while Doyle continues to be disgusted by the stranglehold of Sherlock Holmes, he is slowly captivated by actual detection, something the real Sir Arthur Conan Doyle also did \u2013 he \u201chelped\u201d Scotland Yard out on a few cases.\u00a0 As a reader, you can also sense that Doyle is coming around to bringing Holmes back from the dead.<\/p>\n

Harold\u2019s story, which is really a chase for a Macguffin in the form of Doyle\u2019s diary, nevertheless takes him to all the holy grail locations of any Doyle\/Holmes fan, ending at Reichenbach Falls.\u00a0 While a rough knowledge of the books and the character of Holmes add to your enjoyment of the book, it\u2019s not really necessary, as this is a wonderfully told story.\u00a0 And you\u2019ll discover, just as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself did, that Sherlock Holmes will never die.\u00a0 In a rapidly changing world, this is a real comfort, as is this wonderful book.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This was a blast of a read, one that can be enjoyed by the non Sherlock Holmes fan as much as the devotee.\u00a0 While Laurie King\u2019s Mary Russell books focus on a young girl meeting Holmes as an old man, this novel focuses on a young Sherlockian in the present who is on the lookout … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[5,10],"class_list":["post-436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-americancozy","tag-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=436"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":438,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/436\/revisions\/438"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}