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In January 2010, at an annual gathering of some of the most influential Sherlock Holmes fanatics - the Baker Street Irregulars - in New York, there's an electric air of excitement. Alex Cale, the most famous Sherlockian, has announced the finding of the lost diary of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. The diary is the Holy Grail of Sherlockia, and many of them have been searching for it for most of their lives. Everyone is dying to know what is in the lost pages that cover the Autumn of 1900, not least Harold White, the newest initiate into the Sherlockian inner circle. Back in time, in October 1900, Arthur Conan Doyle is still ignoring pleas from an angry and grieving public with a stoic resolution not to resurrect his most hated creation, Sherlock Holmes, having killed him eight years previously. But an attempt on his life by way of a letter bomb sent to his family home - Undershaw in Sussex - draws him back to the seedier side of Victorian London as he and his close friend, Bram Stoker, find themselves embroiled in the brutal murder of two women. In 2010, on the morning of his presentation of the long-lost diary to the world, Alex Cale is found dead in his hotel room, and Harold finds himself playing the part of the detective, trying to work out who murdered Cale while at the same time hired by Arthur Conan Doyle's great-grandson Sebastian to find the diary - missing from Cale's hotel room. He's joined by Sarah, a reporter who conned her way into the convention in search of a story and soon they're on a plane to London. The two story-lines play out alongside one another, the two timelines alternating chapter by chapter. This doesn't confuse as much as it irritates. Just as one story gets interesting, the narrative swaps to the other, breaking any tension, destroying the suspense, and at times slowing the pace so that one plot line doesn't race ahead of the other. The two must stay in step, as the conclusion of one is the reveal of the other. This novel has its good points and its bad ones. The settings are great. Moore nails the comparison of modern-day 2010 and Conan Doyle's 1900 with ease, and while the filth of Victorian Whitechapel is mostly confined to the past, the comfortable living of the well-off remains in bright contrast to the lives of the impoverished, in the present as much as in the past. The downside to the book is its characters. Harold is a reluctant hero, painted as a pathetic, lonely character, obsessed with Sherlock Holmes and in desperate need of a social life outside of Sherlockia, which is a shame because he could have been so much more rounded, more human and more real. Sebastian, Sarah, Alex, indeed most of the supporting cast are difficult to like on any level, as is the 'character' of Conan Doyle. The only one who comes over as a decent human being is Bram Stoker. The ending too, the revelation of why and how the diary went missing, is strangely unsatisfying, and while I can't say I didn't like or enjoy the book - because I certainly did - it takes a certain dedication to the subject to plough through all the way to the end, and not to want to hurl the book across the room in frustration upon reaching that point. THE HOLMES AFFAIR was published in the US as THE SHERLOCKIAN. Madeleine Marsh is an aspiring writer who lives in South West England. She helps run sci-fi conventions and loves modern cinema.
Reviewed by Madeleine Marsh, March 2012
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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