Raymond Bannister is a wealthy man living a secure life, but the day that he receives a single slipper in an envelope his world falls apart. He seeks out a place in the bad part of town – is he looking for his own demise? He is found slashed down in a dirty alleyway. The crime and the crime scene are inexplicable to Lestrade, and he seeks the help of his new consultant detective, Mr. Sherlock Holmes.
This beginning will lead us back in time, to India, and it will lead us to the strange origin of a group of children that call themselves the Irregulars. Is the answer to this case also the answer to the big question – who is Sherlock Holmes?
Meanwhile the emotions between Missy Hudson and John Watson are stirring, as a certain Mary Morstan seeks the help of Sherlock.
A mysterious and cruel new player has entered the London underworld, his signature is just the letter

‘The Irregulars’ is the second book in the ‘Becoming Sherlock‘ trilogy, which started with the excellent ‘Becoming Sherlock: The Red Circle‘. The trilogy takes place in a decaying near-future London. The London of this story is as relatable and as alien as Doyle’s London. The story is populated with characters who are like but different from the names they bear: John Watson, Mrs Hudson, Lestrade, Mycroft Holmes, Irene Adler, and Mary Morstan, all of whom revolve around the central enigma of the series, a man rescued from the Thames by a gang of feral children known as The Irregulars. A man with a head wound that has robbed him of his memory. A man of extraordinary abilities who, after Watson nursed him back to health, took on the name Sherlock Holmes.

I enjoyed the second installment of ‘Becoming Sherlock,’ although I didn’t think it worked as well as the first book. 

The opening chapters didn’t seem as tightly written as the first book, but after the first couple of chapters, the writing seemed to hit its stride, the dialogue improved, and I became immersed in the story. I think the novel suffered from being structured around two closely linked stories, the first of which delivered rather less than the second. 

The first story was an investigation into the death of an apparently successful businessman who was killed when he ventured into the wrong part of town and got into a fight with a band of feral children. The investigation was a little thin. The backstory that gave the genesis of the death in a robbery gone wrong was beautifully done, adding pathos to the outcome. Yet it felt to me that, at the end of this, the novel almost restarted so that the second story, one in which the feral children were less tangentially involved, could be told. It left me feeling that the first story could have been omitted or cut back, with no damage to the narrative. 

The second story began as an investigation into the death in India many years earlier of Mary Marston’s father and became an investigation into the origins of the feral children known as The Irregulars and perhaps into Sherlock Holmes’ own origins. This story worked very well. It captured the spirit of a Conan Doyle story but one that was updated to include leading-edge biopharma research carried out by British scientists in labs in India. It was a story of intrigue, corruption, privilege, poverty. abuse, imprisonment, murder and revenge. It was told with style and kept me guessing. I loved that The Irregulars in this story are not at all like the band of street urchins turned spies-for-hire in the Conan Doyle stories, but something stranger and much more dangerous. These Irregulars are clever, scary, lethal, and closely linked to Sherlock’s own obscured by amnesia origins. 

I enjoyed watching the core characters and the relationships between them grow and develop during both investigations. I admired how the two stories advance the trilogy’s story arc and left me looking forward to the big reveal in the final book, ‘Becoming Sherlock: The Magician.’

‘Becoming Sherlock‘ was conceived as an audiobook and lends itself well to the medium. It’s performed by talented Alfred Enoch. Click on the YouTube link below to hear a sample.

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