Sherlock Holmes and the Devil's Grail: A Narrative Believed to Be from the Pen of John H. Watson, MD (Paperback)

We get no real insight into the Holmesian character, and certainly none into the often-overlooked Watson. (In truth, a lot of the recent pastiches use this duo only as an excuse to introduce other historical or fictional characters that the author is far more interested in investigating.) The antagonists are singularly bland, and the supporting cast is not altogether memorable.

The key cryptographic puzzle is rather intricate, though, so much so that several diagrams are required in order for the reader to make any sense of the whole thing. It's fairly clever.

However, the denouement is just ludicrous and the fulfillment of Holmes' plan requires that everyone involved should unwittingly act out their part by undertaking the most irrational actions. The whole climax feels forced.

My biggest complaint? The villains are threatening Holmes' client from the moment he sets foot in England and wish to prevent him from going to a certain place, when, in fact, they have no evidence that he ever intends to go there, nor that anything he might do would in the slightest way be disadvantageous to them. In fact, as it all turns out, the bad guys have no way of solving a riddle without his assistance in the first place, so they would've been better advised to have duped him into acting on their behalf. But perhaps I quibble.

In any case, it's a quick read for those who absolutely must have a Holmes fix, and the notes at the end of the book are not without interest.

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But at the end, things fall apart. First, Holmes' preposterous plan for dealing with the three villains would, in real life, have led to a mass grave covering the bodies of Holmes, Watson, their client, his son, and a number of Baker Street Irregulars! Second, the nature of the "Devil's Grail" itself is a huge, huge letdown. But right up to these final pages, things move along well, and the entertainment value of the proceedings is unquestionable.

I do have one other reservation about the novel, but it is a reservation I have about fully half of the hundred or so novel-length Holmes pastiches I have read over the years. Namely, the villains act exactly contrary to their revealed motivations. They want to find the secret hidden in the ruins of Glastonbury, but they spend half the novel preventing the one man who can find the secret for them from going there! All they have to do is wait until Col. Harden takes his photos, then steal them. But instead they are involved in a hundred pages of nonsensical foolishness to PREVENT Harden from getting the info they need. Then, with Holmes on the case, all they need to do is to wait until Holmes finds the Grail and take it, but insead they interfere constantly for another 70 pages. Of course, the answer to the paradox is that the author could not fill his pages with action unless the villains behaved this way! But I wish more authors would try to find another way to keep the reader's attention besides having the villains act like the Coyote in the Roadrunner cartoons throughout the book.

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