Unasked-For Book Reviews

  I want to preface by saying I love the Sherlock Holmes stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.  I read The Hound of the Baskervilles when I was in High School and was fortunate enough to read a version that included the original illustrations from The Strand Magazine. I was hooked!  I proceeded to read A Study In Scarlet, The Sign of the Four, The Valley of Fear , and all 58 of the short stories that Conan Doyle penned. I have read and re-read these stories numerous times.  Further, I have read a lot of Sherlock Holmes pastiche. Pastiche is an artistic work that imitates another work, artist, or period.  In writing, it’s generally professional, published writers that seem to write pastiches, as opposed to fan fiction, which is similar, but seems to be written by mostly novice writers and non-professional writers. With this unasked-for information, my latest Mystery Book Club book was the first book in the "Enola Holmes" series by Nancy Springer, The Case of the...

  The Tainted Cup , by Robert Jackson Bennett. An unasked for book review. Book 1 of the Shadow of the Leviathan series. Usually I include a Goodreads synopsis of the book I'm reviewing.  However, I am going to pass on doing that this time, because the synopsis of this book is both dull, and slightly inaccurate. The synopsis mentions magic, but there is no magic in this book, and a very basic description of the plot. I will instead include a portion of The Washington Post review: A Holmes and Watson–style detective duo take the stage in this fantasy with a mystery twist, from the Edgar-winning, multiple Hugo-nominated Robert Jackson Bennett “Great fantasy detective stories are too rare, but Bennett—[a] rising star of fantasy—more than delivers.”—Charlie Jane Anders,  The Washington Post The Tainted Cup takes place in a society and culture that has developed around the terror of Kaiju attacks, which are the Leviathan mentioned in the series title. These monsters change th...