Sherlock Holmes: Five Miles Of Country
Since the beginning of literary time readers have been well supplied by writers writing about writing and the characters they created.
From Sappho, through Chaucer, Shakespeare, Dickens and on to the moderns, we are blessed, few more abundantly than Arthur Conan Doyle with his Mr Holmes, with critiques, homages, spoofs. adaptations and many versions of his work, for stage, radio and both sizes of screen. So much so that we might well label him “Mr Spinoff”. Then, just when enough might be said to be enough, along comes Gretchen Altabef with Five Miles of Country, the third book in a trilogy.
This elegant publication takes the usual surprising liberties with the accepted Sherlock Holmes-Conan Doyle characters, as well as facts regarding relationships and locations and cleverly develops an ingenious and original new plot, finally delivering to the reader a stunning conclusion to the novel.
The unpretentious prose flows nicely, although I doubt that Dr Watson would have used the phrase “…brought Holmes and I” before “to where Sherlock’s skills are requested, by his acquaintance, police chief Theodore Roosevelt, to assist him in solving the mystery of the violent death of a celebrated star of the New York vaudeville scene, a danseuse, known as Rosalinda, who has been savagely murdered in Thomas Edison’s film studio West Orange”.
The opening section of the book is a lengthy preamble, and we are 60 pages into the text before Holmes and Watson even board the ship that is to carry them closer to the scene of the mystery they are to solve. I found myself becoming impatient and eager for red herrings to be identified and false trails to be exposed. But Sherlock works at his own charming pace as, it seems, does Gretchen Altabef.
