The Devil's Promise

November 3, 2014
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson have come to the Devonshire coast for rest and seclusion in this outstanding pastiche from British Holmes expert Davies (The Scroll of the Dead). Holmes is in a black mood from inactivity back in Baker Street, and their discovery of a bludgeoned body on the beach does little to improve his disposition, especially after an unexpected visit from a sinister local priest. The same corpse is soon found by Watson buried in the sand and later at their cottage fireplace. These inexplicable events compel Holmes to inquire in the lonely town of Howden, an evil place wracked by violence and hostility to outsiders, where the detectives encounter Enoch Blackwood, son of notorious devil worshipper Bartholomew Blackwood. Satanic forces pursue them to London, where Watson recovers from a head wound, while Holmes exhibits increasingly strange behavior in a secret investigation unlike any other in his long career. Holmes purists may not appreciate this case, but it is a gripping and deeply unsettling chronicle by a highly skilled writer.

November 15, 2014
The year is 1899. Sherlock Holmes is thinking about retiring, having grown bored with the lack of challenging cases. Dr. Watson has convinced him to go on holiday to the Devonshire coast, a trip designed to give his friend some peace and relaxation. But when Holmes finds a dead body on the beach, and the body promptly disappears, peace and relaxation are the last things on either of their minds. Davies, a noted Holmes scholar and author of several previous novels about the great consulting detective, has put together a very clever mystery involving a small village whose residents seem a little odd, the family of an infamous satanist, and a dark conspiracy. If you gathered up all the stories and novels written about Holmes, those written by his creator, Arthur Conan Doyle, would be seriously outnumbered by those written by other people. There's a scale of quality, too, with the nonConan Doyle stories, ranging between very good and quite awful. Rank this one closer to the very good end of the scale: it boasts a good story, and, moreover, it feels right. A welcome addition to the vast Holmes literature.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)

August 15, 2016
Sherlockians hoping for a new take on Holmes's involvement with Jack the Ripper will be disappointed by this uneven pastiche set in 1895. The opening pages demonstrate how well Davies (The Devil's Promise) can capture the Watsonian idiom and effectively extrapolate from Conan Doyle's original work. Watson refers to his own regrets at being childless and his devastation at the death of his wife by way of introduction to a kidnapping case. Ronald Temple comes to Baker Street for help after his eight-year-old son, William, is abducted in broad daylight in Kensington Gardens by two thugs, a crime witnessed by the boy's mother and nanny. Six days later, the Temples have received no ransom note, nor any other word about William. Despite the paucity of evidence, Holmes finds a clue that leads him to Whitechapel and a revealing conversation with a pub owner. More a thriller than a mystery, this adventure is marred by foolish behavior on the part of a villain and a conclusion that owes more to luck than mental acuity.

April 1, 2019
Davies’s uneven ninth novel-length Sherlock Holmes pastiche (after 2016’s The Ripper Legacy) pits the master sleuth against legendary criminal hypnotist Gustav Caligari, whose guilt is revealed from the outset. A sadist as a child, Caligari remains a sadist as an adult. After his attempts at murder almost land him in custody in Prague, he moves to London, where he recruits a stranger he encounters by chance, who calls himself Robert, to become his “instrument of death.” Robert’s first victim, Lady Sarah Damury, whom he strangles at Caligari’s direction, turns out to have been connected with a stolen ruby case that Holmes is working on. The detective gets nowhere in his inquiries into Lady Sarah’s death, and uncharacteristically adopts a passive approach in the hope that the killer will make a mistake he can capitalize on. That’s not the only aspect of Davies’s depiction of his lead that jars as the story works its way to a melodramatic conclusion that doesn’t present Holmes in the best light. Davies deserves credit for trying something different, but readers will hope for better next time.