Sherlock Holmes vs Dracula
By Loren D Estleman

     With a title like this, it sounds almost too good to be true if you are a fan of this sort of gaslight thriller. I don’t need to describe what it is about, as surely the title is self-explanatory. Holmes & Watson pit their wits against the Great Undead, and Watson tells the world the true tale of what happened, the version that Bram Stoker didn’t want to for some reason. Estleman, not noted for this type of thing as a rule, manages to get under the skin of the story and tell it in a suitably Conan Doyle style which is laudable. Where he falls down somewhat is in not bringing enough that is new to the tale, or in making it sufficiently different from the Stoker version. It’s a slim volume and told with admirable pace and verve on its plus side, and a lot of fun--that perhaps goes without saying. But there ought to be more here that we don’t already know about and cannot actually guess for a truly impressive novel.