It is November 1890 and London is gripped by a merciless winter. Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson are enjoying tea by the fire when an agitated gentleman arrives unannounced at 221b Baker Street. He begs Holmes for help, telling the unnerving story of a scar-faced man with piercing eyes who has stalked him in recent weeks. Intrigued by the man’s tale, Holmes and Watson find themselves swiftly drawn into a series of puzzling and sinister events, stretching from the gas-lit streets of London to the teeming criminal underworld of Boston. As the pair delve deeper into the case, they stumble across a whispered phrase ‘the House of Silk’: a mysterious entity and foe more deadly than any Holmes has encountered, and a conspiracy that threatens to tear apart the very fabric of society itself. With devilish plotting and excellent characterisation, bestselling author Anthony Horowitz delivers a first-rate Sherlock Holmes mystery for a modern readership whilst remaining utterly true to the spirit of the original Conan Doyle books. Sherlock Holmes is back with all the nuance, pace and powers of deduction that make him the world’s greatest and most celebrated detective.

IN A NUTSHELL
An excellent pastiche. Faithful to the characters and spirit of the original books, but with a clever twist of being written by an older Watson, able to reflect on all of Holmes’ cases and how he, Watson, had chosen to write about them. The writing echoes Arthur Conan Doyle’s style and avoids both anachronisms and faux-Victoriana. The book is longer and the plot is darker and more intricate than the original Holmes novels, and deals with themes that resonate more with modern sensibilities. 

My wife and I listened to the audiobook version, narrated by Derek Jacobi, across a few evenings this week. It was an entertaining listen, both because of Horowitz’s prose and Jacobi’s performance.

I liked that the pace and style of the storytelling resembled Conan Doyle’s, rather than being accelerated to match twenty-first-century expectations. I also liked that, as with Conan Doyle’s stories, the strongest voice was that of Watson himself.

The plot ultimately took on a broad scope and offered intricate schemes of deception and malfeasance but the start was slow and quite pedestrian. I couldn’t see Holmes’ motivation for taking the case. He remarks early on that “This is becoming an increasingly interesting and complex case’ but I had no idea why he thought that.

 One of the things that made the book work so well was having Watson write this at the end of his career as a remembrance of earlier times. This allowed Watson to provide context as he reflects on events, personalities and relationships. He even critiques his own writing, rebuking himself for his focus on each case as a puzzle while ignoring the impact on the people involved.

To me, the tone of the storytelling felt authentic (or close to it). The language avoided anachronism and faux-Victorian expressions. Watson tells the story with the same economy and brio that I remember from ‘A Study In Scarlet‘. 

The story itself was longer, more complicated and had a bigger scope than most of Holme’s stories. The plot worked, but I felt the ending dragged a little as the two subplots were tied together. The story deals with themes of corruption, cover-ups, sexual exploitation and the abuse of power in ways that will resonate with modern audiences but which I don’t think would ever have found their way into the pages of ‘The Strand Magazine’ in Conan Doyle’s day. This was tacitly acknowledged in the book and used as the reason why Watson had not published a story covering these events, which took place in 1890, at the time that they occurred. 

I enjoyed Derek Jacobi’s narration. I’m looking forward to listening to him narrate. ‘Moriarty‘, the second book in this series. Click on the Youtube link below to hear a sample of Jacobi’s narration.