A review by macbean221b
Sherlock Holmes and John Watson: The Day They Met: 50 New Ways the World's Most Legendary Partnership Might Have Begun by Wendy C. Fries
3.0
This is a fun collection of flash fiction, showcasing fifty different ways in which Holmes and Watson might have met. I really only have one criticism, but it's kind of a big one.
The introduction posits that "[t]here is no time and no place in which John Watson and Sherlock Holmes would not have met." That sounds like it's setting the reader up for a really wide variety of eras and locations, right? But of the fifty stories, forty-four are set in London. Twenty-five are set between 1897 and 1888, and twenty-three are set between 2007 and 2015. There is one set in 1996, and one--my favorite one--is written in a way that it could be either 1864 or 1984.
I enjoyed this collection, but if more of the stories had veered away from late-Victorian and modern times, I would've liked it even more.
(Also? The author is clearly a huge Watson fan--she often writes him nearly as competent as Holmes. Which is fine with me, personally; the further from Nigel Bruce's Watson a characterisation is, the happier I am. But I know some people who read my reviews might be kind of turned off by a shiny, less problematic Watson.)
The introduction posits that "[t]here is no time and no place in which John Watson and Sherlock Holmes would not have met." That sounds like it's setting the reader up for a really wide variety of eras and locations, right? But of the fifty stories, forty-four are set in London. Twenty-five are set between 1897 and 1888, and twenty-three are set between 2007 and 2015. There is one set in 1996, and one--my favorite one--is written in a way that it could be either 1864 or 1984.
I enjoyed this collection, but if more of the stories had veered away from late-Victorian and modern times, I would've liked it even more.
(Also? The author is clearly a huge Watson fan--she often writes him nearly as competent as Holmes. Which is fine with me, personally; the further from Nigel Bruce's Watson a characterisation is, the happier I am. But I know some people who read my reviews might be kind of turned off by a shiny, less problematic Watson.)