Cold War Espionage, MOSCOW EXILE from John Lawton (Both Joe Wilderness and Lord Troy)

 [Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“Lawton’s approach to espionage lacks the multiplying deaths and poignant self-blame of a Le Carré novel. But the resilience and determination of his Charlie, Coky, and eventually Joe Wilderness provide a strong portrait of Lawton’s real-life sense of espionage.”

 

Moscow Exile is offered as a “Joe Wilderness Novel,” the fourth in John Lawton’s international espionage series. Aside from a cryptic prologue set in 1969, though, Joe Wilderness is conspicuously absent from this lush historic novel until nearly 300 pages in.

 

That still gives Joe plenty of work space, though, since Lawton’s model for this work might as well have been a classic Russian novel, lengthy and rich with generations of conflict, wealth, and fractured loyalties. And there’s no need to rush: Moscow Exile offers a bitter promenade through the Red Scare years of American politics and the malicious maneuvering of the Senator who in real life was Joseph McCarthy —here, Robert Redmaine, sleazy and powerful, tearing apart Hollywood’s professionals with accusations of anti-American affiliations.

 

Making the novel even more delicious for fans of Lawton’s British Inspector Troy investigation thrillers, Troy and his politically potent brother slide directly into the story, as the British leadership—especially via MI5 and MI6—attempts to shape its Iron Curtain diplomacy.

 

The heart of Moscow Exile is an alliance between a British spy who’s actually working for Moscow—the elegant Charlie Leigh-Hunt—and a far cleverer and beautiful woman, Charlotte (aka Cokey) Shumacher, also working for “the Reds,” for different reasons. Lawton provides many sexual liaisons for the pair (such a relief to read untwisted sexuality, despite the international betrayal going on) and demonstrates how direct international espionage can be. It would be nice to think that the America of the 1950s and 1960s wasn’t really infiltrated this way. But for Charlie and Charlotte, with specific reasons to prefer “anyone but Britain” handling world leadership, spying comes easily and with lower risks than expected.

 

An ”ordinary” espionage novel would make sure that those betraying America and Britain to Russia/the Soviet Union would pay a deadly price. Lawton offers a mirror inversion instead: Secrets, seduction, and certainty fuel a path to safety behind the Iron Curtain. Only Joe Wilderness, with the Troy brothers oddly interconnected to him, sees clearly what Soviet ideology means for Moscow.

 

Oddly, Moscow Exile lays out reasons that people chose on behalf of global Communism and active socialism, and those characters who sustain their loyalty to related ideals somehow manage to escape deadly failure. This “Russian novel” hosts an unusual morality that places loyalty—to whatever cause—and generous friendship together as allies, so that even a politically crooked philanderer can become heroic in his or her way.

 

That allows Joe Wilderness, with his plain British loyalty and willingness to be used as a pawn in a spy swap, to sit on the outskirts of this hefty book. Instead, Coky Schumacher demonstrates how an unsuspected wife of a half-mad politician can protect the Soviet side. She spells it out for Charlie: “Why, you think it happenstance that Bob chooses the innocent and harmless to grill? I steer him away from the real Communists.” She also details the moral quagmire of creepy politicos like her Senator husband: “The amazing thing about Red-baiting is that he’s stuck with it. I think he was on a quest to find out what would win, and if it turned out to be right-wing, racist, paranoid bigotry, so be it. That is the mask he has adopted,” she explains. And when Charlie gets her point and suggests, “We might become what we pretend to be,” Coky provides a blunt summary: “We are what we pretend to be … and in that is a lesson for us both, Charlie-boy.”

 

Lawton’s approach to espionage lacks the multiplying deaths and poignant self-blame of a Le Carré novel. But the resilience and determination of his Charlie, Coky, and eventually Joe Wilderness provide a strong portrait of Lawton’s real-life sense of espionage: calculating, well-armed, self-defined. The irony of Moscow Exile is that those with undivided loyalty in the novel—the Troy brothers, Lord Troy’s wife Anna, and Joe himself—occupy only “bit parts” that require swift decisions and able allies.

 

On the other hand, the true villain of the book, Senator Redmaine, bears a strong resemblance to some of today’s political rising stars. “And that is a lesson for us both,” as Coky would point out.

 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Dr Ruth Galloway (Archaeologist) Mystery 15, THE LAST REMAINS by Elly Griffiths—Oh Yes!!

 

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“By positioning a vital threat to Cathbad, the most mysterious and loyal and honorable person in the series, Griffiths creates heart-wrenching power within what might otherwise be a relatively routine investigation for Ruth Galloway.”

 

The Golden Age of British crime fiction is marked with authors Agatha Christie, Dorothy L. Sayers,  John Dickson Carr, and Josephine Tey, among others. Today, American readers benefit from quick cross-Atlantic publication of British work, as well as masterful translation of Nordic, French, German, and Spanish work, and from authors in African and Asian nations.

 

The “special relationship” of America and Britain reinforces the power of top-notch British mysteries and espionage today. With the fifteenth title in the Dr. Ruth Galloway series from Elly Griffiths, the continued growth and deepening of both Griffiths and her characters enhance a thoroughly satisfying mystery: The Last Remains.

 

Ruth Galloway is an archaeologist who’s developed a forensic side-specialty, thanks in part to being the primary researcher in the field for her area of Britain, one rich with artifacts from the ever-fascinating Druids. Her efforts for the police have also grown in significance because of her personal relationship with the local investigator, DCI Nelson.

 

So when builders renovating a café find a skeleton hidden behind a wall of bricks, Dr. Ruth Galloway gets an immediate summons to the scene—and it only takes her a few minutes to declare it a crime scene and don her forensics hat, along with involving Nelson and his team.

 

At the core of this series, beyond Ruth’s complicated relationship with DCI Nelson, has been her friend and ally Cathbad, a modern Druid opening up ancient ways and bringing both tenderness and wisdom into the circle of friendship that includes Ruth and Nelson. Cathbad’s allegiance to both the pagan past and the children he and Ruth nurture parallels his dual nature of ferocity and caregiving.

 

The Last Remains amps up the tension when Cathbad becomes a person of interest in the teen’s death, then vanishes without warning. However, he has written a farewell and a will, a terrifying aspect that suggests the time to find and save him could be very short, or even nonexistent. His life partner Judy is a police officer but can’t investigate because she’s too close. Desperately she suggests, “Maybe he decided to go on a pilgrimage? The only things is …” her face crumbles, “why wouldn’t he tell me?” DCI Nelson hopes Cathbad, suffering the blurring effects of “Long Covid,” may have amnesia and will turn up. Ruth, however, has increasing reason to doubt such a happy result.

 

By positioning a vital threat to Cathbad, the most mysterious and loyal and honorable person in the series, Griffiths creates heart-wrenching power within what might otherwise be a relatively routine investigation for Ruth Galloway. There will be no putting down this compelling mystery until Cathbad’s disappearance can be solved. And in classic heroic manner, to get to that point will require Ruth to risk her own life, even as she struggles to define her future nd her daughter’s.

 

It's remarkable to realize that The Last Remains is the fifteenth book in this series, which began with The Crossing Places. Where Griffiths’ early books offered quirky and lightly twisted plots, this latest one suggests that, a century after the original Golden Age, British crime fiction exhibits a second surge of development underway.

 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 
 

Missing Westlake's Richard Stark Crime Novels? Try Charles Salzberg, MAN ON THE RUN

 

[Originally posted at New York Journal of Books]

“Crime fiction readers may think they know what’s ahead, based on other noir work. But Salzberg is way funnier and more unpredictable himself, and the ride with the podcaster and the master thief—and the obsessed cop—takes great twists.”

 

How do you like your noir crime fiction served? If you mark the checkboxes for unpredictable, twisty, fast-paced, wry, mocking, and “with a side of dark humor,” by all means order up Charles Salzberg’s mystery Man on the Run.

 

If fact, the humor is much more than a “side” for this seasoned author. Even the premise, revealed in alternating points of view, comes with a feeling of “how come nobody thought of this sooner?” And there you have it—even the review begins to sound like Francis Hoyt, an expert in burglary and pressing the “scary psycho” buttons when he wants to spook someone and get them to leave him.

 

But that’s not really his motive in ambushing a true-crime podcaster as she’s coming out of a California coffee shop. Francis is turned on by the off-beat confidence he sees in Dakota Richards (and her lack of a bra, her pixie features, that hint of a previously broken nose). Francis Hoyt is a predator at heart, but his decision to tease this would-be journalist means he gets a new kind of attention, and frankly, he wants it.

What about Dakota? Sure, she recognizes the mythically capable criminal and fugitive. It’s her business! But she knows enough to play it cool. Besides, she’s already fascinated by what he’s like in person. Small, neat, compact. And she should be careful:

 

“He’s also got this palpable sense of danger thing about him. And it’s not because I know who he is and what he’d done. He’s just, like, like dangerous looking. And there’s something else. It’s in his eyes. Intelligence. … There’s something going on behind those eyes, something that only adds to this sense of danger that surrounds him.”

 

If that sounds like a classic tough-girl-lusts-after-bad-boy plot opening, you’re underestimating Salzberg: He’s in here for the darkness, the quirkiness. And how do you ramp that up? First, add a job, a bank to rob where even thinking about the task could get you into the crosshairs of the mob bosses who own it. Next, in the tradition of pushing your protagonists to their limits, Salzberg drops a retired state investigator, Charlie Floyd, into the middle of it all.

 

Actually, credit Dakota with both appearances, since she deliberately involved the two antagonists in her plans for a compelling podcast: She trailed hints about doing a piece on Francis, to the point where she knew he’d want to get into the reality show. Plus, she tracked down Charlie Floyd with every intention of aiming him at Hoyt. And as her own fascination with Francis Hoyt balloons, she clear-sightedly scolds herself for becoming “that sad, pathetic, desperate woman who falls for the guy in prison.” Except she’s actually fallen for risk and danger, the ultimate comeback to her mother’s snarky criticisms. She knows she’s got a hot podcast already: “I was stalked by Francis Hoyt and lived to tell the tale. How’s that for a show-stopping teaser?”

 

Crime fiction readers may think they know what’s ahead, based on other noir work. But Salzberg is way funnier and more unpredictable himself, and the ride with the podcaster and the master thief—and the obsessed cop—takes great twists, all the way to the very delightful finale. 

 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 
 

Brief Mention: Dark Revenge Crime Fiction from Eli Cranor, OZARK DOGS

My home-grown measure of a good crime novel is the number of people I'd like to give a copy to. On that scale, alas, OZARK DOGS by Eli Cranor scored really low. 

And it's not because of the violence. Anyone reading dark stuff, "noir," knows how to handle that. Plus I really appreciated Cranor's earlier crime novel, Don't Know Tough.

Partly it's because nothing turns out right for anyone in this Southern thriller with a missing teen and her secretive granddaughter.

But the bigger part is because it paints a compelling image of "country folk" as violent, menacing, and ready to hold deadly grudges across generations (the pre-publication publicity even mentioned Hatfield–McCoy blood feud). Cranor is such a convincing writer that readers run a risk of thinking this Southern Gothic shows the real world.

Sure, you can put menace and despair into fiction, and maybe some readers won't take it personally. But give me a choice and I'll take the way Randall Silvis handles the theme instead, where courage and loyalty have as much of a presence as the junkyard dogs and the weapons.

Get a copy if you want to go really, really bleak. Just don't blame me if you drop into a week of depression or waste the grocery money on chocolate, to recover.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Brief Mention: Light-Hearted French-Countryside Cozy, DEATH AND CROISSANTS by Ian Moore

Did you seriously consider turning part of your home into an Air-type bed-and-breakfast right before the pandemic? Are you still longing to jump into the short-term rental market to make some cash on the side? Or (confess now) have you always pictured yourself baking marvelous muffins and serving them to international guests who leave glowing comments on your Yelp listing?

DEATH AND CROISSANTS by Ian Moore will save you a lot of trouble (and apron laundry). Set in France and written with a clever and light touch by British stand-up comedian Ian Moore, it offers all the complications of running a bed & breakfast, complete with complaints, crabby clients, fraud and failed payments, and most of all, apparent murder.

Richard Aisworth is still not sure what's going on with his marriage, since both his wife and his daughter have left him to manage the B&B, and both seem to cordially despise him and his passion for old films. At least his chickens (their fresh eggs are a feature of his inn) don't disappoint ... until  they begin to vanish, and one is clearly killed as a message.

His personal complications with his guest Valérie, well-intentioned though they may be, tangle quickly with the bloody handprints, mysterious messages, and multi-village chase scenes. So if you're ready for a fun and deliciously French addition to your summer TBR stack, fix yourself a pitcher of something fresh and cold, open up the hammock or lawn chair, and settle in with your copy. 

[This is Moore's American debut, but there are more titles in his series; cross your fingers that they will soon come "across the pond."]

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

New Tight, Dark Canadian Hard-Boiled from Vern Smith, SCRATCHING THE FLINT

Run Amok Crime Fiction releases today/tomorrow a new hard-boiled detective novel from Vern Smith. SCRATCHING THE FLINT continues to wind his dark twists tighter, until explosion is inevitable. Set in pre 9/11 Toronto, the book opens with a grim killing of a squealing witness that implicates a sleazy lawyer in the messy patterns of mob execution.

Hard-boiled as a genre is saturated with rage and impulse; Smith takes it a layer deeper by leaking the real precursor to rage, the inner morass of doubt and shame invading lives spent avoiding human connection. Here's Gordon, for instance:

First came Gordon's return to drink, falling down after last call in front of the Bovine Sex Club, breaking his wrist, claiming he did it rollerblading. The emergency doctor prescribed enough painkillers to kill all kinds of hurt. Then Gordon was hooked on those, too. Luckily, the cops didn't bother with a blood test three weeks ago, relying only on his breathalyzer reading, 0.81, which was bad enough. That made him not just a bona fide boozer, but a bona fide boozer inside the small world of Toronto journalism. ... Did that make Gordon lowlife? ... And did he even want to know?

Meanwhile, anti-fraud team Alex Johnson and Cecil Bolan (from Smith's earlier short story collection The Gimmick) try to break into the mobbed-up crime ring that Gordon wishes he were good enough to expose — and Gordon sneaks up on their investigation. Not surprisingly, he digs himself into deeper messes, while the detectives circle around the same swamp. At times it's hard to tell the good guys and their guilt from Gordon and his shame ... except Gordon's making worse mistakes because he's so darn scared. 

If you cut your reading teeth on Los Angeles noir, or Donald Westlake's series under his Richard Stark pen name, here's a great chance to step deeper (or, considering Gordon, higher) and grab the bitter disillusionment of modern police challenges and the messy choices that power provides. Oh, and that title? Think a Zippo lighter ... and all the steamy and screwed up moments likely to follow that scratched flint.

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

The Living, Lasting Legacy of Author Anne Perry (1938-2023)

(Author Anne Perry in 2012. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.)

Dave and I met one of the great mystery authors of our lifetime at a reader/writer conference, Bouchercon, when it was held in Albany, New York. We'd prepared for months —even years—for this, collecting the books written by Anne Perry. Others in line around us clutched to their chests one or two books to be signed; some, like us, had more. We toted ours in big canvas book bags.

I recall how awestruck I felt when I reached the front of the line and stood in front of this British author. There wasn't time for conversation: Maybe another hundred people waited behind us. Briskly, in our practiced rhythm, Dave and I opened each lovely hardcover book to the title page for this author's bold signature, then the next, and the next, as one of us put away signed copies and the other lifted more books to the table.

In minutes, it was over; I felt breathless, truly amazed that life could include such a moment.

Historical mystery author author Charles Fergus, however, made much different use of his time with Anne Perry. I love his story of that moment and its lasting legacy in his writing. Here you are (the original is published on his blog, https://charlesfergus.com/blog-posts):

Anne Perry's Advice to Me: Make True a Major Character

Anne Perry, who died recently at age 84, wrote dozens of popular mysteries set in Victorian-era England. According to her website, more than 26 million copies of her novels have been sold since the first one was published in 1979.

 

Perry wrote 32 William and Charlotte Pitt mysteries; they feature a police officer in late 19th-century London and his wife, an unconventional aristocrat. Perry also wrote a 24-book series about a detective named William Monk, who loses his memory after a carriage crash, and Hester Latterly, a former Crimean War nurse who ultimately becomes William’s wife and helps him adjust to his brain injury and solve crimes. 

 

I met Anne Perry in 2013 at a conference of the Historical Novel Society, which was held in an old hotel in St. Petersburg, Florida. I had completed a manuscript for the first Gideon Stoltz mystery, A Stranger Here Below, and was looking for a literary agent. I’d also signed up for a course on how to craft effective pitches – both a longish description of a novel, and a shorter one, sometimes called an “elevator pitch” from the notion that you can deliver this near-breathless summary during a brief elevator ride. 

 

Perry gave the keynote speech on the conference’s first evening. The next morning when I came down to breakfast, I saw her sitting there by herself. I asked if she wanted company, expecting her to say no, but she was delighted to share the meal and some conversation. 

 

She asked where I was from and what I was writing about. I said with a laugh that I’d just give her my brand-new elevator pitch: “In 1835 in the Pennsylvania backcountry, a young sheriff unearths disturbing links among a judge’s suicide, a trial and hanging 30 years ago, and a recent murder. To conduct his investigation, he must relive his own mother’s murder, a crime that remains unsolved.” 

 

I also mentioned that one reason I’d written a murder mystery was because I had lost my own mother to a murder, and I wanted to write a story that did not trivialize the horrific, life-swerving effects that a murder leaves in its wake. 

 

Years later, I would find out that Anne Perry had committed murder herself. In 1954, in Christchurch, New Zealand, at the age of 15, she and a pathologically close 16-year-old female friend killed the friend’s mother by bludgeoning her using a sock with half a brick in it. They somehow thought that killing the woman would prevent the friend’s parents from leaving New Zealand, which would have forced the two adolescent girls to separate.

 

Ms. Perry’s criminal past had been revealed in 1994 when Peter Jackson told her story in his film Heavenly Creatures, starring Kate Winslet as the confident, conniving teenager Juliet Hulme – who, after serving five years in prison, would be given a new name and ultimately would become the bestselling mystery author Anne Perry.

 

That morning in St. Petersburg, after hearing about my planned mystery series, Perry urged me to develop Gideon’s wife, True Burns Stoltz, into a major character. Perry said that in writing her novels, she felt that having both male and female main characters helped her examine situations, relationships, and crimes from two very different perspectives. She felt that readers liked that approach. And she said that writing from those differing viewpoints was fun. 

 

By then I’d begun working on my second mystery, Nighthawk’s Wing. In it, True hauls herself out of a deep and nearly suicidal depression brought on by the death of her and Gideon’s infant son. And in the third mystery, Lay This Body Down, True blossoms into a quirky, tough, determined heroine whose way of looking at the world differs from – and complements in an important way – that of her rational, thoughtful, sometimes almost plodding sheriff husband. 

 

Perry’s obituary in the New York Times noted that she never married; friends felt she ended romantic relationships because she didn’t know what to say about her past. It also quoted some things she’d said in a 2017 documentary film about her life: “In a sense it’s not a matter – at the end – of judging,” she said. “I did this much good and that much bad. Which is the greater?” 

 

She continued: “In the end, Who am I? Am I somebody that can be trusted? Am I someone that is compassionate, gentle, patient, strong?” She mentioned other traits, including bravery, honesty, and caring. “If you’re that kind of person,” she said, “if you’ve done something bad in the past, you’ve obviously changed.”

 

Anne Perry offered me encouragement and spot-on writing advice. I’m glad to think of my character True as one of the things she gave to the world.

 PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Cuban-American Romantic Suspense from Chanel Cleeton, THE CUBAN HEIRESS

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

“A tenderness for Cuban life and the way the island draws people back to their roots colors the determined women of this novel and the men who assist them. Cleeton’s characters offer a beautiful pairing of tenderness and passion, anger and revenge, courage and resolution.”

 

This lively and twisty suspense novel from Chanel Cleeton pairs the glamour and desperation of women’s survival in the Great Depression, highlighted with a delicious Cuban American flair. Occupying different parts of the magnificent luxury liner S.S. Morro Castle are two women whose secrets intertwine, and two determined thieves, one charming, and the other a clear menace. Cruise-ship entertainment may hide the dangers during daylight, but on the night decks, murder knows few bounds.

 

Elena Reyes, say one woman’s false documents. Her first mission on the boat is to retrieve a pistol that’s been smuggled aboard for her, thanks to other Cuban American allies. Her justofied rage is more than sufficient for the pistol’s use—but are her other skills enough to protect her?

 

New York heiress Catherine Dohan can flash emerald earrings and a massive diamond engagement ring while traveling with her wealthy fiancé and his small child from an earlier marriage, with whom she’s not supposed to interact. But when the earrings turn out to be as false as her persona, that’s another revelation about the supposedly wealthy man she’s engaged to.

 

When the charming and insightful Harry pays too much attention to Catherine, her hunger for romance and real affection flares into an uncontrollable response. And even though she can see the hard-scrabble career of seduction and theft that Harry juggles, the complications of the deception she is working mean she needs an alliance with this mysterious rogue.

 

She’s done her best to size him up: “Perhaps he’s hunting for a wealthy spouse as well … While I shouldn’t fault him, given my own ambitions, I won’t countenance anyone jeopardizing mine.” Prodded, though, she spits out her reality: “I like seeing people get what’s coming to them.” With Harry’s widened eyes, she instantly knows she’s made a mistake and revealed that she’s not the spoiled and pampered heiress she’s working so hard to portray.

 

Cleeton deftly alternates points of view between these two crafty, scheming women, and only gradually is the connection between them revealed: a fire, an abusive man, an escape. A false death certificate. And something about Raymond, the man Catherine’s engaged to.

 

As Harry becomes a more trusted ally, he shares his criminal insight with her: “There’s something about Raymond—a disregard for others, disdain for anyone he views as beneath him. … Whatever your game is, don’t think he doesn’t have one of his own.”

 

Cleeton, a Florida native with Cuban roots of her own, shows the skills she’s honed in four earlier romantic historical novels as she whips between the two women’s deceptions and risks. A tenderness for Cuban life and the way the island draws people back to their roots colors the determined women of this novel and the men who assist them. Cleeton’s characters offer a beautiful pairing of tenderness and passion, anger and revenge, courage and resolution. Not until the poignant final chapters will all the twists be satisfyingly revealed, with Catherine’s wish fulfilled: that people “get what’s coming to them.” And that includes the possibility of love, after all.

 

PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here. 

Extraordinary Graphic-Novel Version of Sherlock Holmes, "The Final Problem"

[Originally published at New York Journal of Books]

 

“Sherlock Holmes: The Final Problem in the hands of Hannes Binder is a must for any collection of Baker Street investigations, opening new awareness of the impact of this classic in its time.”

 

Ignore the any “young readers” alert where this book is promoted or displayed for sale: Hannes Binder’s graphic novel version of Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes tale, The Final Problem, is a masterpiece of dark significance and foreboding. To a Holmes fan or collector, each page offers an art-embedded insight into a story that once shook thousands of readers, as Doyle attempted to escape the burden of writing more about the noted detective.

 

The 1893 story called “The Adventure of the Final Problem” began with an abrupt appearance by Holmes at the private consulting room of his ally, Dr. Watson. Binder’s graphic version begins at the same point. Then, however, an adventure opens in compressing the retelling of this tale into a slender “picturebook” format. This will be most appreciated by readers already familiar with Doyle’s original and with the impact of the story in 1893 (and through the next century). The intense and detailed illustrations—which vary from full-page, to two-page spreads, to boxed sequences like an old comic—convey at times even more than the original text.

 

For example, a haunting triptych offers the smoke curling from (probably) Holmes’s cigarette, rounded contours of a brain’s “white matter,” and an ominous arachnid gripping a globe that echoes the mind of the arch criminal—or does it belong to Holmes himself? A glaring embedded eye later views Watson’s tortuous maneuvers to escape Moriarty. Mountainous landscapes, fierce skies, and storm-torn waters deepen the degree of threat and terror.

 

Binder, a seasoned creator in this form, is noted for his scratchboard illustrations. Here, in haunting detail, they are printed in a deep blue that exerts more impact than a black-and-white might have. Glaring faces and ominous oncoming weather nestle among views of rocks and rivers. The smallness of Holmes and Watson, compared to the enormity of Moriarty’s evil and related network, emerge in ways beyond the wording of the original text, yet without distorting it in any way. So when the pair of sleuths approaches the Reichenbach Falls, you can see both their attempt to be casual, and their vulnerability. The inevitable closing of the story, conveyed with a bold series of waterfalls and desperation, is suddenly tremendously moving—as the story must have affected its first-time readers more than a century ago.

 

Sherlock Holmes: The Final Problem in the hands of Hannes Binder is a must for any collection of Baker Street investigations, opening new awareness of the impact of this classic in its time, and even today, as new forces of evil confront humanity. If we could illustrate the chaos and threat of our times as Binder has done here, and present it to each available reader, perhaps it could act as a deterrent to the end of the world as we know it.

 

At last, it is Watson’s words that echo with the well-paced return of the drawings to urbane England: “Two years have passed, but I still feel the gap that Holmes’s death has left in my soul.” Most readers will know that, under pressure from readers, Arthur Conan Doyle found himself forced to pick up the narrative of Sherlock Holmes once again. But this graphic version conveys the agony of the years “in between,” and offers a new impact to what could never be reduced to a mere series of detective fiction.

 

 PS:  Looking for more mystery reviews, from cozy to very dark? Browse the Kingdom Books mysteries review blog here.