Unquiet Spirits: Whisky, Ghosts, Murder (Sherlock Holmes Adventure #2) by Bonnie MacBird Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Sherlock Holmes Adventure #2
Pages: 512
Published by Collins Crime Club on July 17, 2017
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Publisher's Website, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Bookshop.org, Better World Books
Goodreads
The new novel from the author of Art in the Blood. December 1889. Fresh from debunking a "ghostly" hound in Dartmoor, Sherlock Holmes has returned to London, only to find himself the target of a deadly vendetta. A beautiful client arrives with a tale of ghosts, kidnapping and dynamite on a whisky estate in Scotland, but brother Mycroft trumps all with an urgent assignment in the South of France. On the fabled Riviera, Holmes and Watson encounter treachery, explosions, rival French Detective Jean Vidocq...and a terrible discovery. This propels the duo northward to the snowy highlands. There, in a "haunted" castle and among the copper dinosaurs of a great whisky distillery, they and their young client face mortal danger, and Holmes realizes all three cases have blended into a single, deadly conundrum. In order to solve the mystery, the ultimate rational thinker must confront a ghost from his own past. But Sherlock Holmes does not believe in ghosts...or does he?
My Review:
The case, or cases, or perhaps that should be barrels or casks of cases, in which Holmes finds himself in this adventure are fully represented by the three items in the book’s subtitle. There is plenty of whisky in this multi-pronged affair, even if Holmes himself doesn’t drink very much of it at all.
(It is ‘whisky’ and not ‘whiskey’ because that part of the story involves the production of Scottish whisky. Only America and Ireland commonly spell it ‘whiskey’ although there are as many variations of where it is spelled which as there are variations in the spirit itself.)
About that second word in the subtitle – as well as a second definition of the word “spirit” – which comes into play as this is a story that is very much involved with ghosts. While Sherlock Holmes is portrayed as the ultimate rational man in that he absolutely does not believe in spirits of the ghostly kind, he is still human and is as haunted by his own past actions and regrets as any of us.
Even if he is utterly unwilling to admit it – to the point of burying the memories that give rise to those ghosts.
As much as his initial client in this wheels within wheels mystery of conspiracy and murder revolves around others’ belief in ghosts and hauntings versus Holmes’ utter lack thereof, the true heart of the case is wrapped around events in Holmes’ past that continue to haunt his present – and may very lead to that third word in the book’s subtitle if he doesn’t let himself remember things that he’s been doing his very damndest to suppress for more than a decade.
Escape Rating A: One of the reasons that I’m enjoying this series, and this interpretation of the Great Detective and his friend and chronicler, is that it feels like it owes much of its presentations of the characters to more recent portrayals of this iconic duo in movies and television.
In other words, this Holmes is more human and more feeling than the Holmes canon’s ‘thinking machine’, and his relationship with Watson is much warmer even if the true bonds of their friendship are seldom, if ever, explicitly stated.
That this particular story is both a convoluted and twisted mystery worthy of Holmes at his best while, at the same time, being a case that relies on his humanity coming back to bite him in the ass is just a bit of what made this story so compelling to read. (I literally finished it in a day.)
At the same time, something that adds to at least this reader’s compulsion to find out whodunnit so very quickly was the way that it wove the real world events and conditions of the time into the motivations for at least some of the characters’ actions – whether legal, illegal or merely scandalous. (We forget that Holmes’ original creator didn’t deal with historical events because they weren’t historical to him or his intended readers. Those real historical events were exactly the kind of thing that people were reading the Holmes stories to escape FROM, then, where we, from close to a century and a half later, are hoping to escape TO, now.)
I picked up this particular entry in Bonnie MacBird’s Sherlock Holmes Adventure series because I enjoyed the first book, Art in the Blood, and really, really liked the fifth book, What Child is This?, when I read it as part of this year’s Ho-Ho-Ho Readathon. That fifth book gave just enough hints about the content of the books I hadn’t yet read, which at that time included this book as well as The Devil’s Due and The Three Locks, to tide me over the parts I hadn’t read while still leaving me plenty teased to find out all the details of what I missed.
This whole, entire story being an exploration of those details that I was previously missing. I had been a bit put off by the projected 512 page length of this one, but this ‘twilight zone’ period between Xmas and New Year’s seemed like the perfect time. Which it absolutely was.
(Also, if you are put off by that prodigious length, please don’t be. It not only reads really, really fast in the sense that one gets caught up in it, but also in the sense that it doesn’t take nearly as long in actual reading minutes as it would if it were truly 512 pages long. In hardcover those pages must have been nearly large print.)
About the story, well, I did have a grand time even if Holmes and Watson were mostly not. But then, that’s usually the case with a Holmes story, isn’t it? Especially for Watson. Holmes generally seems to be in his element, and part of that element usually involves keeping poor Watson in the dark EVEN as he’s asking the good doctor to bring his revolver. Although this particular story certainly wasn’t any fun for Holmes, either. Cathartic – absolutely. Fun, not so much. Also very nearly deadly but that just added to the speed of this reader’s page-turning.
To make a long story – although not nearly as long as this story purported to be – short, I had a fantastic reading time with this interpretation of Holmes and Watson and the Unquiet Spirits they faced. I will be continuing my catch-up read of the series with The Devil’s Due the next time the mood strikes.
And I’m absolutely looking forward to reading the sixth and latest book in this compelling series, The Serpent Under, for a blog tour in just a few short weeks!
One thought on “Grade A #BookReview: Unquiet Spirits by Bonnie MacBird”