March 16, 2015
An anarchist plot hatched by the Brotherhood of Ireland, an increasingly militant group dedicated to Home Rule, poses a threat to Queen Victoria in Douglas’s first novel, a convincing Sherlock Holmes pastiche. Around five o’clock one morning, Inspector Lestrade calls on Holmes and Watson at their Baker Street rooms. A few hours before, someone slashed a portrait of a former prime minister at the National Portrait Gallery and daubed the letters BOI in red paint on the wall next to it. Meanwhile, a foreign criminal known only as the Albino has arrived in London, reported to be on a quest for something called England’s Treasure. Holmes infiltrates the Brotherhood, but the discovery that another vandalized painting was a fake takes the mystery in a different direction. Douglas does a good job of giving Watson opportunities to display his sense of humor, while preserving Holmes’s sharper edges. Readers looking for a high-quality new adventure with Conan Doyle’s beloved characters should be satisfied.
October 31, 2016
Douglas's second Sherlock Holmes pastiche (after 2015's The Albino's Treasure) is elevated by an original plot and prose that convincingly emulates Conan Doyle's. In 1899, Holmes, who's exhausted after carrying out a number of covert assignments for his brother, Mycroft, is unsettled by an anonymous letter. The correspondent, who claims that Holmes once freed his uncle from a false charge of theft, reports that an imposter has set up shop in New York City as a detective, pretending to be Holmes. The Baker Street detective is naturally concerned about the hoax's effect on his reputation, so he and Watson travel across the Atlantic to New York, where, with the assistance of Insp. Simeon Bullock, an expat Englishman working for the New York constabulary, they try to locate the fraud. The man proves elusive, and the client of his whom they interview provides little information, but a murder soon changes the nature of the inquiry. Watson is an active partner to his friend, and the plot twists will surprise many readers. Fans of traditional pastiches will hope that Douglas writes more of them.
Starred review from May 17, 2021
In Douglas’s excellent fourth novel-length pastiche (after 2018’s The Improbable Prisoner), Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson travel to Thorpe Manor in Yorkshire at the request of solicitor Faraday Thompson, who is selling the property and its contents after the death of Lord Thorpe. But first, Thompson hopes the detective can locate some missing valuables, which include the Thorp ruby, a jewel supposedly stolen in the Holy Land during the Crusades by an ancestor. According to legend, the ruby’s rightful owners followed the thief back to England, but failed to recover it, despite torturing the nobleman. Since then, the lord’s ghost is reported to haunt Thorpe Manor to preserve the gemstone’s secret location. Prospective bidders for the estate are guests there when one of them is murdered. A snowstorm isolates the manor, setting up a classic closed-circle inquiry. Besides mastering Watson’s narrative style, Douglas successfully conveys the doctor’s friendship with Holmes. This is several levels above the author’s previous efforts and makes the prospect of more welcome.