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Rating: 
Summary: For Holmes-haters
Review: I suspect that the audience for M.J. Trow's series of mysteries featuring Sherlock Holmes's sometime-collaborator Sholto Lestrade of Scotland Yard is the sort of kid who was too superior, too literary, in high-school to enjoy Conan Doyle's tales, and who relishes having a support group now to affirm how silly they were. The sad thing is that a potentially interesting plot is lurking in here somewhere, but buried as it is in snide sniping and smug self-satisfied smirking ... who cares?
Doyle's Lestrade is somewhat dull. Trow's is a bumbling incompetent who puts Nigel Bruce's Watson to shame. Both bumbling _and_ incompetent. Bumbling: on p. 14, ".. the inspector somersaulted gracefully over the top step and caught himself a sharp one on the .. knocker." Incompetent/stupid: on p. 13, when his superior tells him that the victim's "favorite reading, apart from Private Member's Bills, was the Marquis de Sade", poor Lestrade can only wonder (after sensing a joke re 'private members') "was there a French connection?"
Some may find Trow "full of humor" ... perhaps, of a rather poofty, sniggery 5th grade sort. See above ('private members', hnyuck hnyuck), or on pp. 19-20, "They practised every vice known to men. Not to mention women?" "Women?" "Please, I asked you not to mention women."
The humor is insufferably cute and twee, not so much witty as half-witted and anachronistic: p. 23, "... outside the mellow, yellow entrance porch." Now does 'mellow' really apply to a porch? Under some circumstances, I guess, but there is nothing to indicate that this particular porch is 'mellow' -- clearly, just a chance to refer to the Donovan lyric. Yuck, yuck, shnort. There are also lots of quaint references to Doyle, e.g. further down p. 23, "... shown into the study. It was scarlet ..." Get it? "Study in Scarlet"? Yuck, yuck, shnort, gasp. The chapter titles are all take-offs (not worthy of being called puns) on titles of Adventures in the Canon, e.g. "The Blue Carb Uncle" and "Boscombe's Odd Place." Elsewhere on the same page, "'Ah,' he smiled, 'the old secret-drawer ploy'", certainly a reference to Get Smart. Yuck, kschnarf, ....
Trow's work is like a substandard Monty Python skit put on paper. It does not translate well. Also, MP had the sense (usually) to keep their work short. The tone of this novel might work in a short story, but doesn't in a novel, much less a series of (according to the back cover) sixteen! I understand why the used copy I purchased was nearly pristine except for a bit of wear at the very front.
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