The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes
By Leonard Goldberg, Minotaur, 303 pages, $36.99
Purists may hate a book that begins with the conceit that Sherlock Holmes and Irene Adler had a daughter who, years later, joins with John Watson, Jr. to solve cases. But we're in the era of the New Sherlock. We have the film franchise starring Robert Downey Jr., Benedict Cumberbatch's brilliant TV series, Jonny Lee Miller and Lucy Liu's odd couple, to say nothing of assorted novels and pastiches. In short, Sherlock Holmes lives; he might as well have a clever daughter to take on the mantle. Leonard Goldberg's novel is set in 1910. Joanna Blalock, a nurse, is a woman of rare intelligence and insight. One day, she and her 10-year-old son witness a man fall to his death. It seems he was a well-known gambler. Accident? Suicide? Then Dr. John Watson and his son, John Jr. come to her door and ask her to join them in investigating the death. They are impressed by her deductive skills – obviously an inheritance. But there's more to the Sherlockian twist in this very good little mystery. Goldberg sensibly doesn't try to reinvent Holmes or even Dr. Watson. He creates a slick plot going back to the Afghan Wars, resurrects bits of the Holmes canon when needed and lets a pair of brand-new characters walk through it. An excellent book for the beach.
Love Like Blood
By Mark Billingham, Little, Brown, 422 pages, $22.99
Mark Billingham has always defied the usual, and his new novel – book 14 in the DI Tom Thorne series – is no exception. It's a bit long and a bit slow, but the plot is red hot and Thorne has character depths yet to plumb as we head into London and the difficult issue of honour killing. The story begins with Detective Inspector Nicola Tanner (last seen in Die Of Shame) faced with the murder of her life partner, Susan Best, in front of the couple's London home. The police are hunting for one of Best's enemies, but Tanner believes she was the intended victim. She's been investigating a spate of honour killings among the Hindu, Muslim and Sikh communities. Tanner asks Thorne to investigate Susan's murder and search for a link, if one exists. The Thorne in this novel is a bit creaky. His waistline is expanding and his energy retreating, but he's still a smart cop. The insertion of Tanner gives the series a nice new edge and shows that Billingham can let his lead detective age gently with new books to come.
The State Counsellor
By Boris Akunin, translated by Andrew Bromfield, The Mysterious Press, 300 pages, $36.50
This is the sixth of the Erast Fandorin books to be translated into English and it is, without a doubt, the best. Read one chapter and you'll understand why Boris Akunin is one of Russia's bestselling novelists with 20 million books sold so far. The story begins in 1891, with Fandorin in charge of security for the new Governor General of Siberia. The GG has been spirited out of Saint Petersburg and is in Moscow when disaster strikes. A man, identifying himself as State counsellor Erast Fandorin, boards the train and kills the Governor General. The only clue, a dagger with CG on the handle. The police immediately arrest the real Erast Fandorin who must now save his own skin by sorting out the murder. Akunin combines a grand talent for puzzle plots along with a marvellous eye for historical background. The Russian Empire is riven with dissent. There is a mole in the government. There are terrorist cells in the suburbs. And, above all, there is the mysterious "Green," who seeks vengeance for a dead parent. Then there's Fandorin, a bit of Sherlock Holmes by way of Victorian James Bond. All this in a witty prose deftly translated by Andrew Bromfield so we don't lose the style that gives the series its panache.