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ON THE WRONG TRACK
by Steve Hockensmith
St. Martin's Minotaur, March 2007
304 pages
$23.95
ISBN: 0312347812


Buy in the UK | Buy in Canada

Big Red and Old Red, the cowboy detectives last seen in the delightful HOLMES ON THE RANGE, are back and they’re taking their show on the road. Or at least the rails. After the events of their previous adventure, cowboy work is getting hard to find and detective work even harder, so Old Red insists that he and his brother take the only job offer they get – to go undercover on the Southern Pacific Railroad to catch the train robbers that have been pestering it.

Once on the train, they find themselves surrounded by suspicious railroad men, suspected spies, a Pinkerton agent whose reputation is stronger than his sobriety, and most terrifying of all (at least for the conservative Old Red) the pretty and opinionated Miss Caveo.

Like the train it’s set on, the plot starts at a nice quiet chug setting the scene, then works up a splendid head of steam, mixing mysterious cargo, outlaws, conspiracies, stolen gold, multiple murders, and more. In many hands this would be far too over the top, but it’s grounded by stoic Old Red’s patient logic. Illiterate but intelligent, Old Red is patterning his life of the hero from the stories his brother reads him, and his dogged “Holmesifying” unties all the tangled threads of the multiple puzzles into one solidly satisfying conclusion.

Sequels don’t always hold up to the original; I’m happy to say that ON THE WRONG TRACK is just as rollicking a read as the first book. As before, Holmes is a leitmotif but not a character (although readers familiar with the canon will figure out one of the plot twists well in advance). The narrative, told entirely from Big Red’s point of view, is salty and hilarious – their loyalty oath is “I do solemnly swear that I am not a dirty damned spying bastard” and the poor railsick Old Red finds “the chance to detectify was some kind of miracle cure – Holmes’s Genuine All-Natural Anti-Collywobble Elixir.”

This is one for rail aficionados, fans of Old West mysteries, and Holmsians, and certainly anyone who likes a good belly laugh along with their mysteries. You can read the books out of order, but do yourself a favor – if you haven’t met the Amlingmeyer brothers, get both books. You won’t regret it. In the meantime, the final paragraphs set up book number three, and I’m going to be fascinated to see where that goes.

Reviewed by Linnea Dodson, April 2007

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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)


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