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mayhap's review against another edition
4.0
A credible contemporary contribution to the canon of Holmesian scholarship.
reading_giraffe's review against another edition
2.0
This book was eh. I didn't hate it but I didn't particularly enjoy it. It was just about getting through it for me. I can't put my finger on what exactly put me off but it was just not my cup of tea. there is one thing that I know put me off and that was the writer's tone and style. I found it a little bit pompous and at times very pretentious and that made the going rough.
basil_touche's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
3.75
I've always found the game some hardcore Sherlock Holmes fans play, that pretend the character and the stories were real in the context of late Victorian Britain, to be a fun way of interpreting the character. This book basically runs with the idea and creates a full on biography that never once breaks the illusion.
It's certainly an interesting read for any fans the great detective, and I found myself learning new facts about victorian society at the time. It can be a bit convoluted at times though, where the author tries to get any person of historical note into the narrative, and I found the part where it tells about Holmes' hiatus in places like Khartoum and Mecca to be a tad tedious, where Holmes himself is hardly mentioned for several pages.
Overall, I say it's worth a read if your a fan of Holmes or Victorian history, but if not I'd say this isn't a book for you.
It's certainly an interesting read for any fans the great detective, and I found myself learning new facts about victorian society at the time. It can be a bit convoluted at times though, where the author tries to get any person of historical note into the narrative, and I found the part where it tells about Holmes' hiatus in places like Khartoum and Mecca to be a tad tedious, where Holmes himself is hardly mentioned for several pages.
Overall, I say it's worth a read if your a fan of Holmes or Victorian history, but if not I'd say this isn't a book for you.
eak1013's review against another edition
3.0
The most delightful thing about this book is the sheer glee the author seems to be taking in rolling around in his Holmesy geekery. That enthusiasm is enough to pull me through the slightly dull bits when he's recapping history just because he can, only loosely tied to the story he's crafted for Holmes.
Definitely quasi-academic and not really curl-up-on-a-rainy-day sort of reading, but more than amusing enough to hold my attention in the fits and spurts I gave it.
Definitely quasi-academic and not really curl-up-on-a-rainy-day sort of reading, but more than amusing enough to hold my attention in the fits and spurts I gave it.
wmhenrymorris's review against another edition
What Rennison does here is both hilarious and at time a bit tedious -- he treats Sherlock Holmes and Watson and Mycroft as actual historical figures and, drawing from the Arthur Conan Doyle stories, actual historical events, and his imagination, he creates an entire backstory for Holme and co. The approach is seriously deadpan, but the writing is so fluid and academic that it mostly works. Obviously, the more you know about the Sherlock Holmes stories and about Victorian England, the more you'll get out of it, but I enjoyed even though I haven't read most of the Holmes stories for more than 20 year and my knowledge of history is fairly shallow.
ssejig's review against another edition
4.0
A clever book which intertwines real-world events with extensive research done both of history and of Sherlock Holmes. A great story.
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