Was listening to favorite childhood stories, so thought that listening to a historical fiction about Sherlock Holmes was along the same track! I love Sherlock Holmes I’m almost all the ways. I have watched many actors play him and have read many of his stories if not all. This was an exhilarating story of the lost years; the years that his lost diary covered. Many historical facts, people and places, but also a great yarn of what might have, could have, potentially, happened!

If you love a good Sherlock mystery, give it a listen!! Very enjoyable. ( )

This item stand out for not just juxtaposing an earlier and present date, but a modern Baker Street Irregular with some adventures of Doyle himself, The Irregular, named Harold White, is trying to solve his friends' murder, but also a missing Doyle diary, important because it represents the period during which Doyle decided to resurrect his famous detective. Harold does a fair job with Sherlock's methods in solving the murder of his fellow Sherlockian, but does not initially fare as well with finding the diary, but which he eventually does. Doyle just blunders his way through for his part. A satisfying read, even without a strong mystery. ( )

I'm always a bit wary when someone uses a real person and has them do things their ancestors might object to.
all in all, however, an enjoyable read ( )

Pretty disappointing, actually. (1.5 stars) I don't know quite what went wrong for me---most of the elements were sound. I guess I wasn't a fan of the main character, or the yawn-worthy hetero romance. Most of the characters had an aftertaste of cardboard/Gary Stu-dom, including Arthur Conan Doyle.

Super-duper-main-character-boy even has this whole monologue three-quarters of the way through the book about how he knows that him being a straight white male affects his love for the Victorian era in general and Sherlock canon in particular---but though I appreciated the thought, even that was annoying. ( )

This book and I had problems. Well, half this book and I had problems. The other half was amusing if completely unrealistic.

The Sherlockian is a story told in two timelines: one that begins in 1893, when Conan Doyle makes the fateful decision to kill off Sherlock Holmes, and covers then events that happen though 1901; the other timeline takes place in the 'present', which is 2010, in this case.

The Holy Grail of Sherlockians has always been what happened to a cache of Conan Doyle's papers that were missing after his death, including one of his journals, so the present day timeline is the search for that journal and the answers to who killed the Sherlockian who claimed to have found it, while the Conan Doyle timeline follows events that would have been recorded in the missing journal.

As I mentioned above, I found the present day timeline amusing in a mad-cap caper kind of way - the kind that requires a complete suspension of disbelief, as well as operating on the pretence that law enforcement no longer exist. This story line is entirely about the thrill of the puzzle, the hunt, the process.

But here's my beef, and it's about the other timeline; the historical one. This is a work of historical fiction, and the author is quick to point out at the end that all the events are fabricated. Fine. I read that type of historical fiction frequently - real people in fictional settings. But usually the author has a greater respect for the real-life people he uses in his fictional story lines. There's a certain respect for adhering to a character's basic ... character.

That categorically did not happen here. Moore obviously did not care a wit for maintaining the integrity of Conan Doyle because most of the historical timeline had him doing things so completely out of character as to drive me to yelling at the book.

If I knew nothing about Conan Doyle, I'd have found him and Bram Stoker dressing up as women as crashing a suffragette meeting mildly amusing, but I do know something about Conan Doyle. Enough to know that it beggars belief to think of him doing anything of the sort. If an author is going to write a fictional story using real historical people doing fictional things, those historical persons should do those fictional things the same way they'd did the factual things - otherwise, it's not the same person and the author would have been better served using a fictional character instead of maligning the real one. ("Malign" does not refer to Conan Doyle dressing as a woman, but to a different event that would be a massive spoiler.)

So. Half the book was amusing. The other half ... ok, the other half might have been amusing for someone who doesn't know, or hold in such high regard, the real life people used for fictional purposes, against their basic characters. If you know nothing about Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and are in the mood for a bit of madcap mystery, go for it. If you do know and admire ACD, you've been warned. ( )