Holmes Entangled - Gordon McAlpine

 

Holmes Entangled gives us author Gordon McAlpine's clever take on what just might have happened one day if Sherlock Holmes had been a real life London-based detective, and not the fictional detective still famous all around the world that author Sir Arthur Conan Doyle created in his novels. 

In McAlpine's take, Sherlock is now 73 years old and firmly retired from the detecting business. But Sherlock is still Sherlock, and he can't resist going out into the world disguised as made-up university lecturer identities he creates for himself. The old detective is still clever enough to fool experts in whatever field he chooses to lecture on, and it's obvious that he can keep moving around England from university post to university post for as long as he wants to maintain the charade. 

That all changes one day, however, when Holmes receives a visit from an author he has absolutely no respect for, Arthur Conan Doyle. Holmes considers Doyle a gullible fantasist at best. But Doyle is in trouble - someone has already put a bullet very close to his spine, and now he wants Sherlock Holmes to find out who shot him, and more importantly, why they shot him. Holmes takes the case largely just to find out who tipped off Doyle as to his real identity, but this turns into an investigation that will ultimately threaten the life of Homes and those of everyone he has ever been close to (short list, that). 

Soon Holmes, while at the same time trying to protect everyone from being murdered, has put together an investigatory team consisting of himself, Doyle, and Mrs. Watson (his one-time housekeeper/landlady and the widow of John Watson, the writer who in this real world is responsible for much of Sherlock's great fame). Holmes even recruits to the team some of his Irregulars from the old days despite the fact that they are all well into middle age now and have lives of their own. 

McAlpine is a really good storyteller and this is my favorite of his books. I enjoy the twists and tweaks he puts on his reimagined past events, and this one meanders all over the place - even Edgar Allan Poe's mysterious death becomes a key clue in the investigation at one point. What I most enjoyed, though, was seeing Mrs. Watson finally getting some respect from Holmes for her mind - even to the point of him regretting that he never once asked for her help during his long career. Another highlight was seeing Holmes in yet another face to face confrontation with his nemesis of a brother.

My enthusiastic recommendation of Holmes Entangled does come with one warning. Much of the last quarter of the book gets bogged down by McAlpine's attempt to explain the basic assumptions of quantum physics to his readers. I think that because he realized that few readers were going to get his first explanation, McAlpine felt obligated to rephrase the explanation several more times as it was explained to different characters in the novel. Frankly, I still don't get it - and it all became more of a distraction than an benefit. 

That said, I still rate Holmes Entangled a four-star book, if only barely.

Gordon McAlpine jacket photo