Sherlock Holmes' last case

Review: Sherlock Holmes' last case takes Holmes and Watson to Vienna to meet Sigmund Freud, and gives a sensational new account of what really happened during the Great Hiatus - but it’s not a re-run of The Seven-per-Cent Solution.

The year is 1908: At Martha Freud’s request Holmes investigates her husband’s peculiar behaviour, and Freud helps him to solve the mystery of Reichenbach and the years that followed. Holmes’s childhood, his birthright, and his relationship with the Moriarty family are revealed, and the Napoleon of Crime does make an appearance, in the person of Col. James Moriarty, who twice challenges Holmes to a duel. Dr Freud’s persecutor, we discover, is someone who will later have a profound effect on the history of Austria, and indeed of the world.

It’s heady stuff, excitingly told, though Mr D’Artagnan’s style is not Dr Watson’s. There are broad hints of unpublished exploits, including the Shakespeare Case, of which we are told that Elizabeth I’s one-time favourite, the Earl of Leicester, a poisoner who plotted to seize the crown (*there is some historical evidence for this*) was the direct ancestor of the Moriarty family; and that Edward, 17th Earl of Oxford, was responsible both for foiling Leicester’s plot (*I know of no evidence for this*) and for writing Shakespeare’s plays and poems! (*Oxford was a fine poet, but there’s little resemblance between his writings and those of the Bard of Avon - who, despite a lack of university education, was an armigerous gentleman, and not a ‘simple rustic’.*)

The hardback, strongly made and attractively presented, is currently available only from the Xlibris website. The paperback is also available from Amazon.com, Borders.com and BarnesandNoble.com.

Reviewed by: Roger Johnson, [District Messenger 228, 2003]