Sherlock Holmes &
the Railway Maniac by Barrie Roberts
Allison & Busby - November 2001
ISBN 0749005467
Historical Crime - England & Scotland (various locations) 1907-1914
Reviewed by Rachel A Hyde, MyShelf.com
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If you are a fan of
Sherlock Holmes stories you might well have read Roberts' other fine novel
Sherlock Holmes & The Devil's Grail, a story with just about everything
in it crammed into under 200 pages. This is a case set after Holmes had
retired to keep bees on the Sussex Downs, vowing that nothing will stir
him again
but he had reckoned without his powerful brother Mycroft
whose summons can only mean one thing - danger for King and country. Two
seemingly unconnected railway crashes don't sound like the stuff of anarchy
but it is up to the trusty pair to uncover the connection between a foreign
astronomer, Russians and German spies as the war looms ever larger on
the horizon.
Sherlock Holmes pastiches are fairly common but I would say that Barrie
Roberts writes some of the best. On average he manages to keep to the
laconic but action-packed and sensational style of the originals without
the addition of superfluous meanderings (although there are some in this
book) and out-of-character actions. This is an entertaining story, although
the fact that it is set across seven years makes it lose some of the momentum
that powered Sherlock Holmes & The Devil's Grail and the bewilderingly
long list of suspects that Holmes compiles seems confusing and unnecessary.
This is more of a spy thriller than a whodunit really and I personally
would have omitted the factual doings of such real folk as the denizens
of the Warsaw Restaurant and "Peter the Painter" which seem
to belong to another story altogether and confuse the main plot. You'll
guess it - there isn't really much there to guess - and you will probably
prefer the Devil's Grail adventure if you have read it (if not it comes
highly recommended) but nevertheless this is still a diverting yarn for
a chill winter's evening.
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