The Baker Street Ghost

Review: The Baker Street Ghost is something unusual from the ever-inventive Val Andrews. Scriptwriter Greg Hargreaves, obliged to leave the USA by the unwelcome attentions of Senator McCarthy and the House Committee on Un-American Activities, rents a flat in London - in Baker Street to be precise - and finds that there’s a resident ghost. But this is not, in the usual sense, a ‘ghost story’. The relationship between Hargreaves and Holmes reminds me a little of that between Jeff Randall and the late Marty Hopkirk. The result is a completely fresh view of Sherlock Holmes, a fascinating picture of the British film and TV industry in the early 1950s, a portrait of Orson Welles, and a clever murder mystery. Val Andrews is at his best when writing about the world of entertainment, in which he worked as writer and performer for fifty years. You can hear the port wine and cigars in Welles’s dialogue, as the author knew him and worked with him; and I’m sure Val Andrews won’t mind my mentioning that the character of Greg Hargreaves was inspired by the late Cy Endfield.

Reviewed by: Roger Johnson,[District Messenger 225, 2002]