Book Review: Partners in Crime by Steve Hockensmith (Holmes on the Range #6.5)

Stars: 5 out of 5

Pros: Five fun stories with great characters

Cons: The first story wanders a bit before it really kicks in

The Bottom Line:

Story collection

Featuring a fun duo

You’ll be glad you read

Five Cases of Crime in the Old West

I’m usually a novel reader, so even if an author includes characters I love in short stories, I don’t always try to track down those stories.  Unless they combine them in a collection.  That’s what Steve Hockensmith has done with his Holmes on the Range characters in Partners in Crime.  And I’m glad since I enjoyed catching up with Old Red and Big Red’s adventures here.

If you’ve missed these books, Old Red and Big Red are brothers living life in the American west in the 1890’s.  One night, Big Red stumbled upon a Sherlock Holmes story and read it to his brother.  Old Red loved learning about this detective so much, he started using Holmes’s methods in their lives.  And, considering the mysteries he’s gotten them involved in as a result, that’s turned out to be a very good thing.

This book is a collection of five short stories with the brothers.  They take place from November 1893 to February 1894, so clearly the brothers are busy during that time.  Especially when you figure out that they are just coming off the mystery known as World’s Greatest Sleuth! and solve The Double-A Western Detective Agency in there as well.

The first story finds the brothers returning to their home town in Kansas with mixed results.  When the brothers set out to find a Christmas tree for their landlady, they find a dead body instead.  A series of strange events leads them to go to Idaho to try to help the sheep ranchers involved.  A request in Colorado finds them in the middle of newspaper wars.  Finally, they have to clear their own names when their landlady thinks they are responsible for the things that have been disappearing around their boarding house.

These stories are various lengths, but all told, the five combined equal about a novel’s length.  The first story is the longest, and it’s the one that seems to wander the most before the plot really kicks in.  But, as a fan of the characters, I was finding the homecoming fascinating.  Not all of them involve murder, and I enjoyed that.  It’s always refreshing to read about other crimes in mysteries.

The series has not been strong on recurring characters.  Old Red and Big Red are the only characters we’ve seen in every story.  That holds true again here, although we do see their new business partners in the final story, which I greatly enjoyed.  But that’s not an issue since these two are strong enough to carry us from story to story.  I love their interactions, and they made me laugh several times in each story.  Plus, the rest of the characters in each story are strong enough to pull us in as well.

There are a couple of references to other cases that the brothers have solved, but nothing that would truly be a spoiler.  So if you wanted to jump in here, you easily could since it would give you a feel for the series.  Of course, it would also send you looking for the other books in the series.

Partners in Crime is the next best thing to a new novel in the series.  This will please fans and help hook more on this fun duo.

Be sure to check out the rest of the Holmes on the Range series.

NOTE: I received an ARC of this book.