Laurie R. King has written lots of bestselling novels including the Mary Russell series – in which Ms. Russell is a contemporary of Sherlock Holmes – and her modern-day Kate Martinelli series. Now, in THE ART OF DETECTION, she combines the two fields and has Martinelli investigate a case that has a decidedly Sherlockian connection.
The body of Philip Gilbert has been found in a gun emplacement near Golden Gate Park. His home was a veritable shrine to Holmes and the Victorian era, with the downstairs an eerie reconstruction of Holmes’ sitting room as described in the stories of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Upstairs, his house was normal, but in the main area, he had gaslights, a fake coal fireplace, and even the initials “VR” (Victoria Regina) poked into the walls, just as in Holmes’ fictional room.
The mystery deepens as Martinelli discovers that Gilbert had in his possession a supposedly lost story of Doyle’s, one that seemed to be about Sherlock Holmes. In that tale, a body is found dumped in a gun emplacement near Golden Gate Park. Martinelli must find the killer, and the only person who could have done it is someone who had read the lost Holmes story.
Martinelli’s Sherlockian credentials are not in question. She treats the master reverently, and Holmes fans will want to add this title to their collection just because of that. But while the subject matter is interesting, I wish King had a little more zing in her writing style. Things become a little plodding and workmanlike, as she tells us exactly what occurs, step by step. They did this, then they did that, then they did this.
One example is the four-page speech a park ranger gives to Martinelli and her sidekick Al Hawkin about the guns all along the bay. While accurate and interesting, it seems out of place for a ranger to give such a speech when he is escorting the detectives to find a dead body.
Another odd choice that King makes is to include the text of the lost Doyle story. Not just snippets, but the entire text of the story. And while this, too, is interesting, its unnecessary presence forces the reader to consider this as a pastiche of Doyle’s writing style, at which I’m afraid King fails. It’s almost as if King had this unpublished short story of her own that she wanted to get some use out of.
Okay, enough whining. If one gets past the interleaved Victorian story and the quotidian descriptions of action, the actual detection in the book is very strong. It’s tremendously difficult to create scenes that highlight deductive reasoning, especially with the far-flung associations that Holmes used to make, and King does a very good job of this. The police work is exceptional, the plot elements are fascinating, and overall, the book is readable, just not quite top of the line.
If we were to compare it to the output of Doyle’s Holmes stories, THE ART OF DETECTION would be more along the lines of “The Boscombe Valley Mystery” and not quite up to “The Hound of the Baskervilles” level. –Mark Rose
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• LOCKED ROOMS by Laurie R. King
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- Holmes on the Range
- The Limehouse Text
- BOOK WHORE >> 11.08.05
