Sherlock Holmes and the Hapsburg Tiara »

In a crafty new novel featuring the world’s greatest literary detective, Alan Vanneman extends the boundaries of the Sherlock Holmes canon with an investigation that takes the celebrated sleuth and his cohort Dr. Watson far from the cozy Victorian comforts of 221B Baker Street. Indeed, enjoying the luxuries of the Orient Express, they travel the breadth of fin de siècle Europe to exotic Constantinople, though not strictly in pursuit of pleasure. For death, too, is traveling first class. The mystery begins familiarly enough in London, in the middle of the night. Holmes and Watson are summoned to a crime scene that seems to vanish before their eyes, as they find themselves with neither evidence nor a client. They do not want for opposition, however, not with the governments of three great empires arrayed against them. As Holmes strives to unmask his most ruthless and elusive foe, he is transported into a world of high finance rife with intrigue and crime. With a cast of characters that includes the enchanting Countess D’Espinau and Winston Churchill, as well as a beggar girl whom Watson adopts, Holmes follows a trail that leads ultimately and unpredictably to the fabled and fabulous lost Hapsburg Tiara.

Publishers Weekly

After his weak debut, Sherlock Holmes and the Giant Rat of Sumatra (2002), which pitted the master sleuth against a race of intelligent rat-men, Vanneman provides a more convincing adventure for Holmes and Watson-a swashbuckling tale of international intrigue centered on a valuable diamond and mysterious Austrian nobles who may be involved in multiple murders. As before, however, the book goes on too long. When Winston Churchill enlists the aid of the Baker Street duo in tracing a man posing as an archduke, Cecil Rhodes summarily dismisses them from the case. Rhodes proceeds to fix a coroner's inquest, thus thwarting them from independently pursuing justice. Years later, the pair resumes the now-cold trail across Europe, accompanied by a reformed street urchin who's been adopted by the good doctor. Offstage much of the time, Holmes employs his spying and burglary skills more than his deductive abilities. Though the author ingeniously adds to the canon by having Watson serve, like Conan Doyle, as a field surgeon during the Boer War, he undermines this plausible twist by once again spending many pages detailing Watson's amorous pursuits ("she grasped me by the most shameless of handles"), a far cry from Doyle's Victorian reticence and a pattern that won't endear his pastiches to proper Sherlockians. (Feb. 2) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.