Written by Graham Moore, Narrated by James Langton

-an audio book review-

Jo Anna Perrin

Sherlock Holmes, in both the enduring reality of the character and the ambivalent appreciation expressed towards him by his creator Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, a rift that caused Doyle to actually kill Holmes off at one point, becomes the  stuff of fiction. Literally.  It is the jumping off  point in Graham Moore’s paean to Holmesiana, The Sherlockian.

If you are addicted to Sherlock Holmes, and even if you just have a passing interest,  it would be hard not to be charmed by this clever and nimble romp through the annals of the great detective. The book derives its pleasure from a replete list of the mechanisms of Conan Doyle–red herrings abound, melodrama ensues, fog proliferates and logic prevails.

It is narrated adroitly by the vocally agile James Langton who manages to capture not only our modern day American protagonists, but does a ripping good job of voicing Arthur Conan Doyle and Bram Stoker as well.  Langston’s choice of a throaty burr for the great author is worth the listen alone.

Although the writing- -this is Moore’s first book- -is often over the top and leaps of logic by the protagonists seem unsupported,  you can’t help but get carried away by the sheer infectious details of the Sherlock Holmes canon and its continued appeal. The book takes on two stories and two eras past and present; the 1900 of  Doyle and the  2010 of modern protagonist  Harold White. I have to say that I found Doyle the more engaging of the characters; Harold White seemed  to lack sparkle, and I found myself wanting to hurry back to the past.

In 1900 a letter bomb has been sent to Doyle, and after a near miss, Arthur decides to investigate the incident himself, which leads him along with his friend Bram Stoker,  into the examination of a series of unsolved murders of young women.   Harold White, on the other hand, has just been inducted into the Baker Street Irregulars on the night when a pre-eminent  Sherlockian scholar, Alex Cale, plans to present to the public a long-lost diary penned by Arthur Conan Doyle. Considered the Holy Grail by passionate Sherlockians,  the diary has been missing since Doyle’s death.

Someone murders Cale in a locked room at the iconic Algonquin Hotel–he is garroted by a shoelace–before he can unveil the contents of the diary. Enter newly minted Irregular White who is brought in to investigate through a series of some-what contrived circumstances.  However,  once you give in to the pleasure of the ride, the contrivance is all but forgotten as you prepare to lose yourself in the London of yesteryear,   the mind of Conan Doyle, a well paced mystery, a land where logic always triumphs, and the result is, well, “Elementary…”

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