Book Review: The Sherlockian by Graham Moore

Stars: 4 out of 5

Pros: Two mysteries that entertain

Cons: Ending feels darker than the story wants

The Bottom Line: 

Past and present give

Two entertaining stories

With a Holmesy touch

Can The Sherlockian Solve a Murder and a Historic Mystery?

I seem to have been on a Sherlock Holmes kick recent thanks to a panel I wanted to attend at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books today.  The last author on the panel was Graham Moore with his book The Sherlockian.  It tells two stories in alternating chapters.  While this debut novel stumbled a bit at the end, I did enjoy it.

This book gives us two mysteries.  In modern times, we follow Harold White.  He's the newest member of the Baker Street Irregulars, a Sherlock Holmes society.  The morning after he is inducted into the group, scholar Alex Cale is set to present a lecture on the contents of Arthur Conan Doyle's missing diary which Alex says he's finally found.  But during the night, someone sneaks into his hotel room and strangles him and takes the diary.  And Harold sets out to find both.

The alternating chapters give us the story of Arthur Conan Doyle during the two months of the missing diary.  Those two months are right before he resurrected Sherlock Holmes.  Those months find Arthur investigating a young woman's death.  He almost immediately connects it with another case that Scotland Yard has forgotten about.  Can he find the killer?  What about the case makes him bring back his greatest creation?

The book started out rather light in tone, especially in the modern chapters.  There are some nice winks at obsessive fans that I got a kick out of reading.  I related to Harold White and he was a great pull into the story.  I wanted to see him solve the case and I was enjoying his flirting with a reporter who seems eager to follow him on his quest to solve the case.  Arthur Conan Doyle was a bit harder to warm up to just because he was so stiff for most of his chapters.

Both stories start fairly quickly (I give a slight edge to the modern story), and it wasn't long before I was caught up in both of them.  They are easy to tell apart since each chapter includes a date tag at the beginning so we never forget which period we are in.  As things progressed, I began to warm up to Conan Doyle as well, especially when interacting with his sidekick, Dracula author Bram Stoker.

The last 75 or so pages are where I have my problem.  Things seem to stall out before we rush toward climaxes that are very interesting.  However, the book also takes a dark turn that feels forced.  I feel like we didn't have to go as far as we did.  On the other hand, there are some discussions on why mysteries in general and Holmes in particular are still popular today, and I enjoyed thinking about those.

I enjoyed The Sherlockian enough to give it four stars for what it got right.  It's a fun mystery that readers can enjoy whether they are fans of the famous detective or not.  It's renewed my interest in picking up the stories myself.