House of Silk--Anthony Horowitz




Hmmm, I thought to myself as I glanced at the book, Anthony Horowitz, isn't he the author of a whole bunch of YA young spy kinds of things?  And here he is continuing the Sherlock Holmes Opus?

It's scary enough when great, well known writers of mystery decide to continue the opus--few of these are entirely successful--most are marginal.  And here is a person I know little--indeed next-to-nothing about presuming to tread on this sacred ground.

Well, I'm here to tell you that House of Silk is among the very finest continuations of the Holmes saga.  Perhaps a bit too much Elephants Can Remember, Sleeping Murder, or Curtain--but that's rather a matter of taste.  And to my taste, this was superb.  We start with a mysterious stranger, evidently a Boston thug threatening an Englishman who had only just recently returned from America--and we move on into murder, mayhem, opium dens, and conspiracy in high places to keep entirely hidden the secrets of the House of Silk of the title.

Mr. Horowitz deftly captures the spirit and even to some extent the language of the original.  His smooth, well-informed writing is such that it made reading a novel-length Sherlock Holmes adventure a real pleasure.  If you are a fan of the great one, you would do yourself a favor by reading this book!

****1/2

Later--Another view of the same--even more favorable than my own.  And I agree with the reviewer--the book is quite a stunning achievement--nearly as good as Doyle himself.  A truly seamless addition to the canon.

Comments

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  2. ΕλλάδαApril 30, 2012 at 8:52 AM

    "The House of Silk's" plot line is Doylonian and the Victorian characters seem in step with those times as do the socially significant points that are made. A few (requisite) red herrings are tossed in, but for the most part, the story moves along quite well: murder, mayhem, and (Sherlockian) "magic" pave the way. Deftly, Horowitz leads us to the conclusion (which, again, probably comes as no surprise to the alert reader, just as Doyle's works really didn't either). One aspect of the book, for me, though, as Michael Crichton did in "The Great Train Robbery" and as Charles Dickens did in so many of his works, is that certain social issues are, indeed, addressed, which provides further depth to the overall book.

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