A- #BookReview: The Three Locks by Bonnie MacBird + Giveaway!

A- #BookReview: The Three Locks by Bonnie MacBird + Giveaway!The Three Locks (Sherlock Holmes Adventure #4) by Bonnie MacBird
Format: ebook
Source: purchased from Amazon
Formats available: hardcover, paperback, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Sherlock Holmes Adventure #4
Pages: 418
Published by Collins Crime Club, HarperCollins on April 13, 2021
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

A heatwave melts London as Holmes and Watson are called to action in this new Sherlock Holmes adventure by Bonnie MacBird, author of "one of the best Sherlock Holmes novels of recent memory." In the West End, a renowned Italian escape artist dies spectacularly on stage during a performance – immolated in a gleaming copper cauldron of his wife's design. In Cambridge, the runaway daughter of a famous don is found drowned, her long blonde hair tangled in the Jesus Lock on the River Cam. And in Baker Street, a mysterious locksmith exacts an unusual price to open a small silver box sent to Watson. From the glow of London's theatre district to the buzzing Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge where physicists explore the edges of the new science of electricity, Holmes and Watson race between the two cities to solve the murders, encountering prevaricating prestidigitators, philandering physicists and murderous mentalists, all the while unlocking secrets which may be best left undisclosed. And one, in particular, is very close to home.

My Review:

I lost count of the total number of locks in this story early on, but I’m absolutely certain there were considerably more than three such items, particularly as more than one escape artist festooned himself with several at a time. Including Sherlock Holmes.

But the first lock in this story is certainly the most poignant, not because it’s a trick lock – although it absolutely is – but because the key to it is locked in Dr. John Watson’s mind or memory. The fancy, filigreed, metal box arrives as a very late delivery from Watson’s equally late mother. The woman is 20 years dead, the box was supposed to have been delivered 10 years earlier, and Watson isn’t certain how he feels about what might be inside other than frustrated as it was not accompanied by its key and more than one locksmith has already thrown up their hands at the thing.

As this story opens, Watson is likewise frustrated with, or certainly in even less charity than usual, with Holmes’ rather high-handed treatment of him as well as his incessant showing-off of his gifts of observation by both observing and remarking upon things that Watson would rather not hear about. Such as the fact that Watson is frequently short in the pocket because he gambles more than he can afford to lose. And that perhaps he’s picked up a pound or three of excess avoirdupois that he can’t afford to gain.

No one enjoys being reminded of their own shortcomings – particularly when that reminder comes from someone who can’t seem to resist crowing about it more than a bit even as they refuse to acknowledge their own.

The cases that find Holmes and Watson as they are somewhat on the outs with each other present the pair with plenty of opportunities to disagree while there are several rather puzzling games afoot.

They are called to Cambridge by a nervous young clergyman who fears for the life of one of his parishioners. That said parishioner is young, beautiful and wealthy, and that she is dangling her possible affections in the path of not one or two but THREE young men – including the clergyman – makes this seem like the sort of melodrama that Holmes usually steers far away from.

They are also visited by a dynamic and vibrant woman of the stage – not the theatre stage but the magical stage. Madame Ilaria Borelli sees herself as an angel who takes promising stage magicians on as projects, provides them with career-making trick devices and effects – and then leaves them behind when they start believing that their new-found success is all their own doing. Her motives for calling on Holmes are obscured – as if by the smoke and mirrors of her profession – but he can’t resist this mystery any more than he can the conundrum in Cambridge.

That these two parallel mysteries, both involving provocative women who seem to lie like they breathe, and both involving locks of vastly different types, coalesce into one deadly mess is just what we expect from this pair. Two of the three locks in this case turn out to be deadly. But one heals a bit of Watson’s long-held heartbreak and guilt. All of which seems fitting for Holmes and Watson, as they put the lock on two murders and solve one of the great locked puzzles of Watson’s life.

Escape Rating A-: When I began reading this series back in November, that first book, Art in the Blood, had been buried deeply in the virtually towering TBR pile for nearly a decade. I was looking for a comfort read. As I always find Sherlock Holmes stories comforting, and I’d just finished something Holmes-like and was in search of yet more comfort, I remembered this series and as the saying goes, “Bob’s your uncle”. That I have now finished this Sherlock Holmes Adventure series – at least until the next book appears – in just six months says something about how much I’ve enjoyed the whole thing. Which I absolutely have.

Part of the fun of this series is that the portrayals of these well-known characters owe every bit as much to the screen portrayals of Holmes and Watson over the past 40 or so years (since Jeremy Brett on Masterpiece Theatre) as they do to the original canon. Many readers have claimed that this particular version owes more to the Robert Downey Jr/Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes movies than it does any other. Certainly, Watson and Holmes’ byplay in this particular entry in this particular series feels like it’s more from those movies than some of the other variations as they are more impatient with each other than is usually seen.

But what makes this particular series different from the others is the way that this author dives a bit more into their respective pasts. While the lock that opens this story is a piece of Watson’s past that we haven’t seen before, the overall series shows us a Holmes who is and has always been aware that he is a bit different from the norms of his time – and not just because he’s a genius. And that awareness gives him a sympathy with others who are similarly affected that we definitely see in this story.

Both Ilaria Borelli and Odelia Wyndham are women who refuse to fit into the boxes that Victorian society would imprison them in – and that’s why Holmes takes up their cases. He is particularly sympathetic to Odelia Wyndham, a bird in a gilded cage trying to break free by whatever means are available to her – and he fears from the very beginning that her thrashing within that cage is going to get her killed. Which it does, ensnared in Jesus Lock on the River Cam.

These are both the types of cases that the canon Holmes wouldn’t have touched. That he does here gives the reader a glimpse into the mind of a man who refuses to admit that he’s being driven by his heart and it adds new dimensions to a character we thought we knew.

If you like twisty mysteries, if you enjoy Sherlock Holmes stories, or if you’re looking for a new take on something familiar, this Sherlock Holmes Adventure series is delightful. So delightful, in fact, that I’m a bit sad that I’m caught up because now I’ll have to wait and see whether or not it continues with my fingers crossed in hope.

~~~~~~ GIVEAWAY ~~~~~~

I’ve read through the (so far) six books in the Sherlock Holmes Adventure series by Bonnie MacBird in just six months because they feature fresh interpretations of characters that I know and love, they are marvelous and absorbing historical mysteries, and they ably filled my need for comfort reads at a time when such have been needed more than ever. I’ve had a grand time slipping into this world with these characters, and I fully confess I’m more than a bit sad that I don’t have any left until the much hoped for next book in the series arrives.

So I’m sharing my love of this series with all of you, in the hopes that making more readers for it will bring the next book faster. At the very least, I promise a good reading time – especially for the winner of today’s giveaway. On this the FIFTH day of this year’s celebration, I’m giving away the winner’s choice of ANY book in the Sherlock Holmes Adventure series by Bonnie MacBird in any format, up to $25(US) which should be enough to get even the latest book, The Serpent Under, if you’re already caught up.

Good luck with today’s giveaway, don’t forget to check out the previous days’ giveaways and remember that there’s still more to come!

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A- #BookReview: The Serpent Under by Bonnie MacBird

A- #BookReview: The Serpent Under by Bonnie MacBirdThe Serpent Under (A Sherlock Holmes Adventure #6) by Bonnie MacBird
Format: eARC
Source: supplied by publisher via Edelweiss
Formats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Genres: historical fiction, historical mystery
Series: Sherlock Holmes Adventure #6
Pages: 375
Published by Collins Crime Club, HarperCollins on January 7, 2025
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.orgBetter World Books
Goodreads

Holmes and Watson face treachery and danger in the latest full-length thriller by Bonnie MacBird, author of the bestselling Sherlock Holmes novel Art in the Blood . Murder, jealousy, and deceit underscore three interlocking mysteries as Holmes and Watson take on a high profile case at Windsor Castle, a boy drowned in the Serpentine, and a crusading women’s rights activist who suspects a traitor in her organisation. The cases send them into danger into locales as varied as the palace itself, a dockland cannery, an arts and crafts atelier, and a gypsy encampment. But is there peril underfoot as well – right at 221B Baker Street? The twisting, breathlessly plotted conjoined mysteries that Bonnie MacBird is known for provide a thrill ride that will delight Sherlockians worldwide.

My Review:

There are a whole lot of serpents in this latest entry in the Sherlock Holmes Adventure series (after What Child is This?), of the reptilian as well as the human kind. A disconcerting number of them end up dead – again of both kinds – in this mystery that includes a surprisingly high body count for a detective who keeps his partner around, at least in part, because it’s Watson who is good with a gun.

On the other hand, there’s a BOMB, and those always cause a lot of collateral damage.

It begins with a dead body – as so many of the best mysteries do. The ‘Palace’ comes calling at 221b Baker Street, in the ‘person’ of a royal carriage and a coachman fully prepared to whisk Holmes and Watson off to Windsor Castle, whether they have other plans or not.

Which, come to think of it, describes more than a little about how this case progresses. The ‘high and mighty’ – and not just those at court – believe they can drag Sherlock Holmes around, order him to provide solutions at times of their choosing, all the while refusing to answer his questions so that he can FIND those solutions.

It’s both fun and frustrating, both for Holmes and for the reader, as we’re used to seeing him as the master of his domain – because he generally was. But this Holmes is still in his early 30s and isn’t quite there yet. He’s still at the ‘faking it until he makes it’ stage more than a bit. But he’s getting there and this reader at least is wondering if cases like this one are what gave him the push to get there as fast as possible.

I digress, but only a bit. I’ll do it again later.

The Palace has commandeered Holmes because they’ve got a nasty puzzle on their hands and need to get it solved before the circumstances get out – as they inevitably will. One of the Queen’s Ladies-in-Waiting was found at Windsor, stone-cold dead and seemingly the victim of suicide.

And that’s the way the Palace Guard wants to play it – so they can bury it and her as fast as possible. Literally sweep the dead woman under the rug.

The problem is that Miss Jane Wandley was extensively and extremely professionally tattooed just before her death. With a snake. Two snakes, actually, both eating their own tails in the ouroboros form, including a significant amount of the tattoo on her face with the heads of the snakes inked on top of her head and hidden under her artfully dressed hair.

She didn’t do THAT to herself. She didn’t kill herself either, as Holmes easily proves in spite of the palace functionaries having cleaned and moved the corpse and the crime scene while destroying an unconscionable amount of evidence.

And it is from that shocking point that the case sends out tendrils and tentacles (yes, I know that snakes don’t have tentacles but it still fits) as well as a whole lot of deadly fangs and death rattles all over the country as Holmes looks into every nook and cranny and snake’s nest to figure out who the real snake in this case is and what part of their own past tail, or tale, they are attempting to eat in their utter destruction of Jane Wandley and her entire family.

Escape Rating A-: The ouroboros image, that snake eating its own tail, turned out to be the perfect metaphor for this book! At the center of this insane mystery is a plot – and a pain – that twists through the story and back on itself – even as it reaches into the long ago but clearly not dead enough past of its perpetrator as well as its many victims.

Even as it also twists through some fascinating bits of history, as this takes place as the Victorian Era is winding towards its inevitable close while the fruits of the Industrial Revolution shape what is to come – and a bit of what comes in this mystery as well.

The Wandley family, as the current victims of this insane mess of a case, represent the crossroads between the old and the new. Jane seems to have been a paragon of the old female virtues even if she was a bit of a tyrant – or especially because. But her younger sister is VERY active in the women’s suffrage movement, while her brother is an artist working for Christie’s auction house and gallery – then an influential force in the lucrative Arts & Crafts artistic movement and still extant today.

The design inked on Jane’s face was drawn by her brother Clarence for Christie’s, while the women’s rights group that her sister Kate belongs to has been the target of a snake of its own, setting them up for violent encounters with the police designed to discredit their movement as a gaggle of hysterical females.

While it’s clear to both Holmes and the reader that someone has it out for the Wandley family, it’s only when he dives deeply into the past that he is able to follow the twisted path of an even more twisted mind to find the dark beginning to this old, cold plan for revenge.

This case, like the previous cases in this series, is every bit as twisty and even confounding as those of the original canon. Howsomever, what makes this variation interesting in its own right is just how much it owes to more recent portrayals of this archetypical duo.

Through Watson’s eyes, we’re allowed to see a bit more of what makes Holmes tick – and occasionally, pardon the pun, tock. Because Holmes is portrayed as being neuroatypical – even if it wasn’t called that in his time – and being aware that he marches to the beat of a slightly different drummer. Just as Watson is aware that Holmes needs him as a sounding board and audience even if he never takes Watson’s advice. Occasionally, Watson doesn’t take Holmes’ advice either, as they both demonstrate in this case.

Also, one of the things that is clear if you go back and read the original stories with a fresh eye, is that Holmes in the original was very much a man of his time – with all the predilections and prejudices thereof. In the case of The Serpent Under, as has been true for the other books in this series, we observe Holmes in situations that make it clear that this Holmes has been written a bit more for our time in his respect for people that late Victorian society did look down upon with extreme prejudice. He never leaps to what would have been the easy conclusion about the perpetrator of this particular case, that either the Roma people did it, or were at least guilty of something that precipitated it, that Clarence Wandley or his male lover were responsible purely because they are homosexual, or that Kate Wandley must have caused it all because women’s rights advocates are all hysterical. Or even worse, that Jane Wandley must have provoked her own murder merely because she was female.

There’s none of that and it makes the case that much more complicated because this Holmes does not succumb to taking any of the easy ways out.

I did say I’d digress one more time before I close, and that digression regards the timeline of this series. The original Holmes stories were not published in chronological order, and this series does not seem to be either. Which led me to a deep dive about when they were set and whether or not Mrs. Mary Watson (née Morstan) was still alive at this particular point in time. Which she was but Watson never mentions why he seems to be rooming with Holmes at 221b while he’s got a wife somewhere. Previous books have at least mentioned the poor woman being off visiting relatives!

The second part of my timeline digression has to do with one of the usually fixed points in the Holmesian timeline. Specifically, Holmes’ encounter with Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls, which took place April 24-May 4, 1891. That’s barely a month after this story takes place, but there isn’t even a Moriarty in sight in this particular interpretation. Which means that I’m wondering really, really hard about just how that’s all going to work out in the next book. If it does at all. We’ll certainly see in the hopefully not too distant future.

Of course, this Holmes’ Moriarty might have been encountered in the one earlier books I haven’t read yet,  The Three Locks. (I absolutely cannot believe that Vidocq is Moriarty. If THAT turns out to be the case I need to go out and buy a hat so I can eat it!) Clearly I need to find out post haste. Which means I’ll be picking up that book even sooner than I thought!

Review: The Race for Paris by Meg Waite Clayton

Review: The Race for Paris by Meg Waite ClaytonFormats available: hardcover, ebook, audiobook
Pages: 336
on August 11, 2015
Purchasing Info: Author's WebsitePublisher's WebsiteAmazonBarnes & NobleKoboBookshop.org
Goodreads

Normandy, 1944. To cover the fighting in France, Jane, a reporter for the Nashville Banner, and Liv, an Associated Press photographer, have already had to endure enormous danger and frustrating obstacles—including strict military regulations limiting what women correspondents can do. Even so, Liv wants more.

Encouraged by her husband, the editor of a New York newspaper, she’s determined to be the first photographer to reach Paris with the Allies, and capture its freedom from the Nazis.

However, her Commanding Officer has other ideas about the role of women in the press corps. To fulfill her ambitions, Liv must go AWOL. She persuades Jane to join her, and the two women find a guardian angel in Fletcher, a British military photographer who reluctantly agrees to escort them. As they race for Paris across the perilous French countryside, Liv, Jane, and Fletcher forge an indelible emotional bond that will transform them and reverberate long after the war is over.

Based on daring, real-life female reporters on the front lines of history like Margaret Bourke-White, Lee Miller, and Martha Gellhorn—and with cameos by other famous faces of the time—The Race for Paris is an absorbing, atmospheric saga full of drama, adventure, and passion. Combining riveting storytelling with expert literary craftsmanship and thorough research, Meg Waite Clayton crafts a compelling, resonant read.

no job for a womanThe background of the the story in The Race for Paris is based on the reports of real-life female war correspondents who fought to cover World War II from the front lines, just like their male colleagues. These were women who were told they couldn’t go near the front, because “we don’t have any female latrines and don’t plan to dig any” in spite of the fact that their male counterparts were generally housed in confiscated chateaus with running water and no need for any latrines.

And there were always plenty of available jeeps with drivers to take the guys to the front whenever they asked, but no matter how many spare jeeps were available where the women were segregated, there were never any for them.

While this may sound petty, the facts were that the Army didn’t want women covering the war, and put every roadblock possible in their path. Pioneering reporters and photojournalists like Ruth Cowan, Martha Gellhorn, Dickey Chapelle and Margaret Bourke-White covered it anyway, often going AWOL from their restricted stations in order to cover the war the way it needed to be covered.

The story in The Race for Paris is a kind of amalgamated and fictionalized version of the escapades of those early female war correspondents, as it follows a young newspaper woman, a celebrated photojournalist, and the fully accredited military photographer who provides them with cover and transportation and makes their exploits possible.

This story actually begins in 1994, as journalist Jane Tracy attends a museum exhibit dedicated to her book of the war photography of her friend and companion on that now long ago quest, Liv Hadley. It was Liv’s photographs that told the story, which Jane narrates in her memories as she views the exhibit.

Liv and Jane, at Liv’s insistence, go AWOL from their posting by hitchhiking a lift from a friendly ambulance driver on his way back to the Front to pick up more wounded. He’ll take them out, but once there, the women are on their own.

In the summer of 1944, every reporter in France wants to be the first to reach Paris to cover the liberation of the long suffering City of Light, under Nazi occupation since 1940. The reporter with the first byline from “Free” Paris will make their career. Everyone wants to be first, and the competition is fierce.

At the same time, the camaraderie is abundant. They are all in this together, at least until that last sprint for the finish. Liv and Jane find military photographer Fletcher Roebuck in the same hunt that they are on, but with a difference. Fletcher is photographing German defenses, and is a British officer rather than a civilian correspondent. He can, and does, commandeer transport and supplies. And he is an old friend of both Liv and her husband, newspaper editor Charles Hadley.

Fletcher can’t resist either Liv or her obsession with being the first photojournalist in Paris. At the same time, he can’t bear the thought of Liv and Jane on their own, hopping from company to company in a mad attempt to reach Paris and stay one step ahead of the MPs who are chasing them and return them to the U.S., in handcuffs if necessary.

So Fletcher falls in with the female journalists’ need to cover the war, no matter what the cost is to themselves. And even though they can’t file their stories out of the very real fear that the MPs will track them down by following their transmissions, they still write and photograph the campaign to take Paris from the ground where the soldiers fight, and not from the sanitized and censored press corps camps.

But Paris is not enough.

Escape Rating B: While Jane is telling the story, it is really Liv’s story that she tells. This seems appropriate, because Liv was the photographer, and Jane was the journalist. Liv was the pictures, and it’s an exhibit of her pictures that frames the story, but Jane was always the words.

So Jane finds herself as an observer in the events. She watches as Liv’s candle burns so bright it burns out, and she watches Liv’s feelings about her marriage and fear that while she is in Europe traveling in horrible conditions and sometimes under both enemy and friendly fire, her husband is back in New York with multiple mistresses. And at the same time dealing with his underhanded attempts to get her back home via the MPs, and her own fear that if she isn’t out there taking new pictures and scaling new career heights, she won’t be interesting enough to keep him.

And at the same time, Jane is observing the very mixed-up feelings of their little trio, as Fletcher falls in love with Liv, and Jane falls for Fletcher. The three of them are an emotional train wreck as they trek across Europe with any unit that will have them and not turn them over to the MPs.

Their journey is often harrowing, but frequently lightened by camaraderie with the troops. They write (and film) stories of both hope and brutality, and come away utterly changed. And they live in fear, fear that they will be shot or shelled, and an even greater fear that they will be captured before they finish their self-appointed mission.

Sometimes the story breaks down into a series of incidents, but it feels as if that mirrors both their journey and the feelings of the troops that they covered. The old army motto of “hurry up and wait” is in full force. They hurry to their next destination, and then wait endlessly for something to happen. And everyone was waiting for the liberation of Paris.

At the end, I was left with some mixed feelings. Their journey to cover the war felt very much like the way it must have been. I would have liked more stories about what they covered and how they felt about it. The framing story, while it turns out to have been not just necessary but carried an emotional punch, also led to what felt like a bit too much emphasis on the triangle between Liv, Fletcher and Jane. I wanted more war stories and less romantic emotional angst. There was enough other angst to go around.

But I came away thinking about the conditions under which the female correspondents were forced to work. The men got everything handed to them, and the women were hemmed in and cordoned off and held back at every turn. Then they were arrested when they questioned their treatment. This wasn’t about their safety, they only wanted to work under the same conditions as the male correspondents. If it was safe enough for one civilian, it should have been safe enough for another. Notwithstanding the combat deaths of the 54 war correspondents killed in action in WWII. Only 500 correspondents were accredited, so that’s a pretty big slice of what was supposed to be a non-combatant position.

The way that Liv’s husband treated her rankled. On the one hand, he encouraged her to cover the war. On the other hand, he started rumors and badgered the MPs to restrict her movements and eventually try to arrest her when she broke out. If he had been the one out covering the war instead, while she would have worried just as much, she wouldn’t have encouraged him on one hand and tried to take it all away with the other. Her treatment embodied the whole era – she did every bit as good as job as any of the men, but was constantly told that she wasn’t supposed to be there at all. But they all were, and their contributions kicked open the doors for women war correspondents in (unfortunately) future wars.