Thursday, March 5, 2015

Sherlock Holmes, The Missing Years: Japan - Vasudev Murthy

Sherlock Holmes, The Missing Years: Japan
Vasudev Murthy
Poisoned Pen, Mar 1 2015, $24.95
ISBN 9781464203657

The fight to the death at Reichenbach Falls back in ’91 left the combatants Holmes and Moriarty dead.  Two years later, Dr. John Watson, having trouble accepting Holmes is gone forever, still grieves for his friend.  Thus a letter from Yokohama stuns Watson.  Astonished by its contents, Watson finds it contains a first class merchant ship ticket from Liverpool to Japan and a note in Holmes’s handwriting: “Watson, I need you...”

On the vessel, Watson shares a suite with Kazushi Hasimoto, who becomes a murder victim.  That proves a lethal omen to what happens in India, Cambodia, China, Japan and other stops to Watson; as apparently Moriarty, who also survived the fight at the Falls, deploys a diabolically clever scheme to rule the world.

Feeling like Holmes and Watson star in Jules Verne’s Around the World in Eighty Days, readers will appreciate this frantic yet ironically at times leisurely-paced thriller filled with dry witty asides.  As the sleuthing pair serves as our guides, fans will relish a grand tour of the globe accompanying them in pursuit of the Professor.


Harriet Klausner

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