Hot on the Scent: A Visitor's Guide to the London of Sherlock Holmes

Review: Those in search of Holmesian London should equip themselves with Arthur M. Alexander's excellent guidebook Hot on the Scent: A Visitor's Guide to the London of Sherlock Holmes.

Others have devised admirable walking tours of London - notably Charles Merriman, Antony Richards and Bill Dorn - but Mr Alexander's 35 'adventures' are more comprehensive than any. He gives useful information for the American or other non-British visitor, and in a series of appendixes goes into such subjects as the Battle of Maiwand, the Festival of Britain, The Strand Magazine, and the Black Museum. There are occasional oddities (Prince Philip, unlike Prince Albert, is not known as the Prince Consort), but very few. As with David Hammer's travel guides, you feel that you're in the hands of a knowledgeable and congenial friend.

Hot on the Scent is a thoroughly enjoyable book.

Reviewed by: Roger Johnson, [District Messenger 196, 1999]