Sherlock Book Reviews - Sherlock Holmes and The Case of The Green Dragon
Posted by Steve Emecz on
I’ve literally collected and read thousands of Sherlock Holmes pastiches, and after a while, one begins to encounter adventures that are not related by Watson. Others who knew Holmes – Wiggins (many of them), Mrs. Watson (all of them), Mycroft, Irene Adler, and Professor Moriarty, to name a few – also have tales to tell. And there are just as many stories that are related in third-person. This is one of those, and freeing it from Watson’s narrative pen gives it a different aspect of realism and violence than one comes to expect from The Canon.
I don’t mind this – all of these different threads in The Great Holmes Tapestry help to provide a vast representation of the entire lives of Our Heroes. This story, set in early 1891 – those terrible months leading to Holmes’s supposed death at the Reichenbach Falls and The Great Hiatus – gives a stark twist to the battle between Holmes and Moriarty. I appreciate what Mr. Rivera has done. This book might surprise someone looking for pure Watsonian narration, but it’s an excellent adventure as written.
KUAF Public Radio in Fayetteville, Arkansas
On the Ozarks at Large program Kyle Kellams interviewed Becca Martin-Brown, Features Editor at the Democratic Gazette Newspaper, in Arkansas, USA.
In their segment “These Things will Make 2023 Better.” Ms. Martin-Brown featured Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Green Dragon, as one of the three things she thinks will make 2023 better for everyone.
Ms. Martin-Brown said, “It is a new addition to the Sherlock Holmes canon. It’s fabulous!,” and, “I am a purist…If it didn’t come from the original canon, I may or may not be happy about it…Had I not known that it was not a part of the original story, I’m not sure I would have known that it wasn’t.”
High praise from a self-described and well known Sherlock Holmes purist.
Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Green Dragon is available from this site and from all good bookstores including:
Set in late January and early February of 1891, during the time that Professor Moriarty declares in The Final Problem, that Holmes had "incommoded" his plans, Holmes and Watson are visited by two charwomen and retained to clear the name of a drunkard lighthouse keeper who has been arrested and charged with the murder of a German man in Tynemouth, England. After learning the name of the unfortunate German man, Gustav Oberstein, Holmes realizes that the case has much greater significance than the simple murder of a German in the Tynemouth lighthouse. So begins a battle of wits between Holmes and Professor Moriarty. Holmes must determine the meaning of the German's last words and solve a mystery that will prevent the deaths of countless people in England and the Continent - a mystery that grabs the attention of the highest levels of the British government. Holmes's very life is on the line as he and Watson comb the English Northeast and the depths of London to solve the mystery of The Green Dragon and bring ruin to the Moriarty syndicate. The game is afoot!