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Steve Hockensmith
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The Black Dove: A Holmes on the Range Mystery (Holmes on the Range Mysteries) Paperback – May 12, 2009

by Steve Hockensmith (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 167 ratings
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In the summer of 1893, Gustav "Old Red" Amlingmeyer and his brother Otto (a.k.a. "Big Red") find themselves down and out in San Francisco. Though cowpokes by training, the brothers are devotees of the late, great Sherlock Holmes and his trademark method of "deducifying." But when they set out to land jobs as professional detectives, they land themselves in hot water, instead.

First their friend Dr. Chan mysteriously takes a potshot at them, fatally wounding Big Red's new hat. Then a secretive young woman from their past pops up and convinces them that Chan's in trouble -- and they're just the men to get him out of it. Unfortunately, they're too late: By the time they track Chan down again, he's dead. The police call it a suicide. Old Red calls that a lie. When he and his brother set out to prove it, they put themselves on a collision course with shady S.F.P.D. cops, brutal Barbary Coast hoodlums and the deadly Chinatown tongs.
Before long, all sides are in a race to uncover the secret that could rock the city. And their only clue to what's actually going on is the enigmatic, exotic and extremely difficult to find "Black Dove."

Previous page
  1. Book 3 of 7
    Holmes on the Range Mysteries
  2. Print length
    304 pages
  3. Language
    English
  4. Publisher
    Minotaur Books
  5. Publication date
    May 12, 2009
  6. Dimensions
    5.25 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches
  7. ISBN-10
    0312565577
  8. ISBN-13
    978-0312565572
  9. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Other books have featured genre-melding cowboys armed with ratiocination as well as revolvers, but Hockensmith's take is quite special. There's his combination of intriguing mystery, breathless action, colorful characters and enough laugh-out-loud moments for the book to fit in the humorous crime category." --The Los Angeles Times

"...a quirky and original mystery series...breezy and funny throughout....." --Robert Croan, The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

About the Author

Steve Hockensmith is the author of the novels Holmes on the Range and On the Wrong Track, as well as numerous short stories. His first novel featuring Big Red and Old Red, Holmes on the Range, was a finalist for the Edgar, the Anthony, the Shamus and the Dilys Award. He lives in Alameda, California.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Minotaur Books; First Edition (May 12, 2009)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 304 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0312565577
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0312565572
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 9.6 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.25 x 0.75 x 8.25 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 167 ratings

About the author

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Steve Hockensmith

Steve Hockensmith

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Steve Hockensmith’s first novel, the mystery/Western hybrid "Holmes on the Range," was a finalist for the Edgar, Shamus, Anthony and Dilys awards. He went on to write several sequels (with more on the way!) as well as the tarot-themed mystery "The White Magic Five and Dime" and the New York Times bestseller "Pride and Prejudice and Zombies: Dawn of the Dreadfuls." He also teamed up with educator “Science Bob” Pflugfelder to write the middle-grade mystery "Nick and Tesla and the High-Voltage Danger Lab" and its five sequels. Learn more about him and his writing at stevehockensmith.com.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
167 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Beth Barnard
5.0 out of 5 stars Humor, mystery, characters that stay with you…you won’t want to miss a single word!
Reviewed in the United States on October 21, 2023
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Hockensmith combines humor, history, cowboys and Sherlock Holmes! A winning combination!
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Chrijeff
4.0 out of 5 stars A San Francisco adventure
Reviewed in the United States on January 9, 2016
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The denoument of the third "Holmes on the Range" mysteries offers (perhaps not entirely surprisingly) a faint hint of that of Nicholas Meyer's classic pastiche,  The West End Horror: A Posthumous Memoir of John H. Watson, M.D. , but it stands on its own and provides not only plenty of suspense, action, and humor, but a picture of wild, wicked pre-Earthquake San Francisco (especially its Chinatown) and a new twist in the relationship of brothers Gustav "Old Red" and Otto "Big Red" Amlingmeyer, cowhands turned "deducifiers" (a career shift explained in  Holmes on the Range (Holmes on the Range Mysteries) , the first in the series). In the Panic year of 1893, following a rather disastrous experience aboard the Southern Pacific RR, the Reds, aged 26 and 20, find themselves stranded and broke in San Francisco, where they encounter two former fellow travelers, Dr. Gee Woo Chan (who inexplicably takes a shot at Big Red with a derringer) and the mysterious Diana Corvus, and are drawn into the mystery of Chan's death when the police claim he committed suicide. With the help of an American-born Chinese guide known as Chinatown Charlie, the trio sets out to find out if that's true (Old Red thinks not), and are soon up to their kneecaps in herb doctors, hatchet men, sing-song girls, crooked cops, and Chinatown's own "Napoleon of Crime," Little Pete. Everyone, including themselves, seems to be after Chan's wife, Hok Gup, the Black Dove, a recent prostitute, and her possible current protector, an opium-smoker known as Fat Toy. Did one of them kill Chan, or is there some more dreadful secret hiding among the alleys and cellars of Chinatown? Hockensmith keeps up the pace and suspense ably, and paints a vivid picture of anti-Chinese sentiment and the insular culture of the Celestials by the Bay, while Big Red, who's been riding with his brother for five years, learns that Old Red is hiding a painful secret. You need to have read the two previous volumes to be sure of everything that's happened before, although you can work out the high spots from the hints in this one.
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Cynthia
5.0 out of 5 stars The game is afoot! Funny and smart
Reviewed in the United States on September 18, 2023
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Rediscovered the series and I'm a lifelong Sherlock fan...now I'm going back to re-read book 1. Good Holmes respect given!
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Marie Smith
5.0 out of 5 stars The Amlingmeyer Brothers Solve a Murder Mystery in San Francisco's Chinatown
Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2021
Verified Purchase
In the third book in the Holmes on the Range series, The Black Dove, Gustav “Old Red” Amlingmeyer and his younger brother, Otto “Big Red” Amlingmeyer have just been fired by the Southern Pacific Railroad and find themselves in the Chinatown section of San Francisco. They run into Doctor Gee Woo Chan, who they met during their last adventure aboard the train (On the Wrong track, Book #2). When they discover that he has been murdered, they team up with Diana Corvus, the lady detective for the Southern Pacific Railroad, to find his killer. This leads them throughout Chinatown where they meet heads of the various tongs and their henchmen, the madam of a brothel and her girls, a crooked policeman, and a charming tour guide. And a rotton green cabbage named “Old Green.” The path to their solving this crime is very indirect, with new characters, situations, dangers, and enough twists and turns to make you dizzy! I enjoyed this book and I highly recommend it. I can’t wait to read the next installment in the series.
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RFT
3.0 out of 5 stars And the brothers keep on Holmes-ing
Reviewed in the United States on June 11, 2011
Verified Purchase
I did like this book and I did like learning more about the brothers. Was Chinatown, S.F. really as bad as the story portrays? The leprosy aspect was an interesting twist I did not expect. The story was slow in parts, the trashy language more 7th grade, late-20th century, but all-in-all, I can't complain too much. It came together in the end.

One thing I do not like about this and earlier books to a certain extent is the lack of a good editor. There are a lot of editing mistakes, misspellings mostly. I also have come across language totally inappropriate for the time the story takes place. Modern day slang does not belong in these books.

Still, these exploits of the Amlingmeyer brothers makes for a decent read.

Out of curiosity, are the misspellings only on the Kindle versions or in the paper versions of the book?
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Patrick Fleming
5.0 out of 5 stars Our heros hilariously deducify their way through a San Francisco mystery worthy of Sherlock Holmes
Reviewed in the United States on January 17, 2020
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I loved this book, which is the 3rd in what is now a six-book series. I first purchased it on a lark, in audio book form to listen to on a drive from Los Angeles to San Jose. A quarter of the way into the drive, I had committed to buying the first two as soon as I was done driving. Hockensmith's writing is engaging and funny. His characters are well-developed and easy to care about as they work their way into and out of trouble.

The story begins as the hard-luck Amlingmeyer bothers Gustav and Otto see employment as detectives in the Bay Area of California in 1893. After being turned down by the Pinkerton agency, they find themselves in the middle of a murder mystery involving the death of an acquaintance from a previous story. This mystery takes them through the seedy underbelly of the Barbary Coast, and also the yin and yang of power struggle in China Town.

Whether they are struggling with the corrupt police officer who heads the racist China Town Squad, the leader of the Six Companies, running from "Little Pete" and his boo how doy, or simply trying to buy information from a cabbage salesman, this book will keep you laughing as you sit on the edge of your seat wanting to see what happens next.
2 people found this helpful
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