The House of Silk

To give them their due, the Conan Doyle estate has been very protective of the Holmes legacy, so the appearance of The House of Silk was something of a surprise. A new Holmes novel by the man responsible for Alex Rider and Midsomer Murders? Hmm.

But, Mr Horowitz, it turns out, knows his Reichenback from his Valley of Fear. He does a great approximation of Doyle's prose style and while the evocation of Victorian London isn't quite what it could be, he keeps the intertwined stories that make up the plot moving along at a nice pace. The appearance of America and secret criminal societies (a pet device of Conan Doyle, used in both A Study in Scarlet and The Valley of Fear) is a nice touch, as is the fleeting appearance of a certain master criminal. The familiar characters are here, Lestrade, Mrs Hudson, The Baker Street Irregulars (indeed these young street urchins play a major and tragic part in the story) and Horowitz gets the interplay between Holmes and Watson just about right.

To my mind there is a dip in the middle of the novel but that is a small quibble in a book that is almost twice the length of any Holmes novel by Doyle himself. To my mind Doyle only wrote one entirely successful Holmes novel anyway: The Sign of Four. His forte was the short story and it is still my preferred way to experience the great detective.

That said The House of Silk is an enjoyable read. The plot is robust enough to stand scrutiny and is probably more shocking than anything Doyle would, or could have written back in Holmes' heyday. Very well done indeed.