In today's crowded publishing marketplace, it seems as if every day brings a new historical novel complete with facts as well as "facts," lovingly recreated period details, and real characters socializing with made-up ones. Not long ago, however, the field could boast few adept practitioners, and one of the best was young Caleb Carr. The Alienist was a sensational and well-deserved best-seller when it appeared on the scene in the fall of 1994, bringing seedy, gangster-infested Old New York to life long before Martin Scorsese got around to it.  Carr went on to publish The Angel of Darkness and Killing Time. Now a professor of military and diplomatic studies at Bard College just up the Hudson, Carr is back with a vengeance with The Italian Secretary, "a further adventure of Sherlock Holmes" authorized and commissioned by the Conan Doyle Estate.

It's all here in this brilliant pastiche: Dr. Watson's tongue-in-cheek, slightly askance perspective; a young damsel in distress; the meticulous attention to fog-drenched Victorian atmosphere; the measured, at times intentionally lugubrious pace of the narrative. "The crisis took place over the course of several unusually cool and volatile September days," Watson begins, and before too long we are settled comfortably into the worn seat cushions of a snug railway carriage on the night train steaming northward out of London, and the two comrades, enwreathed in tobacco-smoke, are just beginning to sort out the ambiguous details of their new case, when suddenly...

Summoned to the Royal Castle of Holyrood House in Edinburgh, Holmes and Watson are confronted with two grisly "incidents," sensationalistically described in a tried-and-true newspaper clipping, that test their mettle to the fullest. Carr takes his loving homage one interesting step further by introducing an element of the supernatural into the story, with such superb effect that I found myself wanting to believe in ghosts in order to understand the complexities of the plot. And the more complex and convoluted it became, the more I wished this rather brief tale would never end.

Whether you are returning to the ageless sleuth carrying an old portmanteau packed with childhood memories, or are new to the game, you will not be disappointed. As a matter of fact, I shall venture to say herewith that your twenty-first century Sherlock Holmes reading experience will be, as it were, both entertaining and edifying. And now, if you will excuse me, I hear my landlady ringing the bell down-stairs to indicate that it is time for tea. There seems to be a mysterious visitor on my doorstep with a tale to tell. Hmmm, judging from his frustrated and peevish manner, I would venture to say that he has recently disembarked from the number thirty-three omnibus...      

Neil Baldwin's new book, The American Revelation, is starting to appear in bookstores this week. It's already shipping on Amazon or through Watchung Booksellers.

May 1, 2005 in Good Reads by Neil Baldwin | Permalink