'1889. The First Terror. At a boys’ prep school in the Kent marshes, a pupil is found drowned in a pond. Could this be the fulfilment of a witch’s curse from four hundred years earlier?
'1890. The Second Terror. A wealthy man dies of a heart attack at his London townhouse. Was he really frightened to death by ghosts?
'1894. The Third Terror. A body is discovered at a Surrey country manor, hideously ravaged. Is the culprit a cannibal, as the evidence suggests?
'These three linked crimes test Sherlock Holmes’s deductive powers, and his scepticism about the supernatural, to the limit.'
Eagerly waiting for the new James Lovegrove Sherlock Holmes book each winter has started to become a tradition of mine, as for three years now readers have been treated to a wonderfully told wintery tale staring the world's greatest detective and his ever present companion; though this year is slightly different. We don't just get one mystery to keep up entertained, we get three.
Sherlock Holmes & The Three Winter Terrors is set across several years, where Holmes and Watson are called in to investigate three cases that have ended in death. The first one, set in 1889, sees Watson returning to his past as he and Holmes travel to the school he used to attend, where a young student was found drowned in the lake on the grounds. Whilst everyone else thinks that this was simply a tragic accident, that the boy went swimming and met a horrible end, one of the teachers, an old friend of Watson's, believes that there may be a more nefarious answer.
The second case, set just a year later in 1890, sees Holmes being approached by a wealthy businessman who wants to hire him to look into strange, ghostly appearances that have been happening in his home. He claims that sooty footprints have been found, hand prints left in strange places, ghostly flames that suddenly vanish, and mysterious smoke that seems to have no source. Not convinced that there's much of a mystery here to investigate, and rather put off by the man's rudeness, Holmes agrees to at least check into it. However, when he arrives at the family home the next day he's shocked to learn that his client is now dead. Suddenly sure that there's more going on that there appears, Holmes sets out so solve what he believes may be a murder.
The final case, set four years later in 1894, after Holmes' miraculous return from the dead, Holmes and Watson are approached to look into the murder of an academic who was found dead on the edge of the forest that surrounds his country home. Whilst everyone thinks it was the result of an animal attack the doctor who examined the body claims to have found human teeth marks on the corpse, leading people to suspect a strange man living deep in the woods with a tragic history may be responsible. Holmes sets out to find out the real answer, before a potentially innocent man falls victim to mob justice.
On the surface there's not much to connect these three cases, except the fact they all take place over the winter months. One is set in a school and sees Holmes investigating an accident. Another is set in the heart of London and may involve ghosts. And the last took place in a quiet country village and might have been committed by a cannibal. You'd be forgiven for thinking that this is nothing more than a collection of three stories without much in common, and that would still be a perfectly fine book; but Lovegrove does something great to tie these cases together. They all keep involving the same family. This isn't just three random cases, but one family's continued misfortune over the years.
It's a great conceit, and one that make this more than just three random stories. We've seen Holmes and Watson meeting people more than once over the years, and there have been sequels to certain of the original stories that see characters and ideas returning; but this might be one of the few times where the two investigators keep coming back to the same family time and time again. This alone makes the book an interesting addition to the ever expanding Holmes canon; but the cases themselves as so wonderfully good too.
James Lovegrove does an excellent job of giving the reader enough clues to be able to figure out everything we need to get to the same answers as Holmes, and there were times that I began to piece things together alongside the detective. However, there's always that moment where I'd thought I'd gotten the answer but found that I'd gone down the wrong line of thought, not because of some hidden detail that I wasn't aware of or some last minute revelation, but because I'd overlooked something or judge something wrong. Whenever this happened and Holmes gave the correct answer I couldn't help but shake my head at my own conclusions and marvel at the answers I was given.
This is a large part of why I really enjoyed this book, why I enjoy all of Lovegrove's Holmes stories. He just knows how to write the perfect mysteries. It doesn't feel like someone trying to emulate the original stories, it simply feels part of that world. He also knows how to make the characters feel more than just caricatures or impressions of the originals. They have personality and charm that feels real, that's true to the source material. James Lovegrove is easily one of my favourite Holmes writers.
This is the third year in a row that I've gotten to sit down in the darker, colder months of the year with a wonderful Sherlock Holmes book. It's something that I look forward to, and this year hasn't spoilt that experience at all; if anything it's been an absolutely wonderful one. I can't wait to see what we get next.
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