With the international bestseller The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Nicholas Meyer brought to light a previously unpublished case of Sherlock Holmes, as recorded by Dr. John H. Watson. Now Meyer returns with a shocking discovery–an unknown case drawn from a recently unearthed Watson journal.January 1905: Holmes and Watson are summoned by Holmes’ brother Mycroft to undertake a clandestine … clandestine investigation. An agent of the British Secret Service has been found floating in the Thames, carrying a manuscript smuggled into England at the cost of her life. The pages purport to be the minutes of a meeting of a secret group intent on nothing less than taking over the world.
Based on real events, the adventure takes the famed duo–in the company of a bewitching woman–aboard the Orient Express from Paris into the heart of Tsarist Russia, where Holmes and Watson attempt to trace the origins of this explosive document. On their heels are desperate men of unknown allegiance, determined to prevent them from achieving their task. And what they uncover is a conspiracy so vast as to challenge Sherlock Holmes as never before.
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The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols” by Nicholas Meyer. I enjoyed this book and plan on eventually reading the first one.
January 1905: Holmes and Watson are summoned by Holmes’ brother Mycroft to undertake a clandestine investigation. An agent of the British Secret Service has been found floating in the Thames, carrying a manuscript smuggled into England at the cost of her life. The pages purport to be the minutes of a meeting of a secret group intent on nothing less than taking over the world.
Based on real events, the adventure takes the famed duo—in the company of a bewitching woman—aboard the Orient Express from Paris into the heart of Tsarist Russia, where Holmes and Watson attempt to trace the origins of this explosive document. On their heels are desperate men of unknown allegiance, determined to prevent them from achieving their task. And what they uncover is a conspiracy so vast as to challenge Sherlock Holmes as never before.
I found the story to be slow moving at first but I eventually got into it. Overall I enjoyed it and found it to be an intriguing read that I would recommend to Sherlock fans.
I requested and received an Advanced Readers Copy from St. Martins Press and NetGalley. All thoughts and opinions are my own.
First of all, I’m not a huge Sherlock Holmes fan. As a young teen, The Hound of the Baskervilles freaked me out. (It still does.) But when I tried to read A Study in Scarlet, it underwhelmed me. The rest? The stories didn’t resonate with me. In addition, most of the Holmesian spin-offs haven’t resonated with me, either.
It’s not Sherlock, it’s me.
All that to say, I can’t speak to any similarities or differences in Meyer’s style versus Doyle’s, how true this version of Holmes is to the original creation, or anything else that matters to die-hard Sherlock fans.
What I can say is this: I enjoyed The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols.
The book opens with a preface, wherein Meyer spins a yarn about the Sotheby auction of a previously unknown Watson journal and a colleague asking Meyer to examine it for its authenticity. Meyer (the fictional version) even references his real life work on the Star Trek series as he continues his tale with how he studied the manuscript, edited it, and what changes (if any) he made. It’s exactly the sort of preface I’ve read for published journals of real life people, though most of those editors aren’t nearly as amusing as Meyer.
If you’re looking for action on page one, this may seem slow. But my inner English major geeked out about this. The preface sets us up for a story where issues of authenticity and forgeries (not to mention truth and lies) are of vital importance.
The preface gives us an amusing, wink-wink, author’s-sleight-of-hand version of this idea. But the story that follows shows just how important this difference is: the results of what we believe to be true affect others in tremendous, sometimes horrific, ways.
The book is by turns fun and horrifying. It’s amusing to read Meyer’s “footnotes” and his innuendos about what might (or might not) have happened between Sherlock and the ravishing Anna Strunsky Walling. But the historical basis for this case is eerily prescient of the 20th century and our own century. When Holmes muses that in the 20th century, crimes are getting bigger, we know just how big those will get.
Meyer weaves current events (such as the failed Russian revolution of 1905) and historical persons into his tale. Constance Garnett, the first English translator of Tolstoy and many other Russian authors, plays a role, as does Professor Chaim Weismann, later president of Israel.
Meyer uses the Protocols, which purport to be minutes from a meeting of Jews plotting to take over the world, for fictional purposes here. (This is revealed early enough that it doesn’t seem like a spoiler, in my opinion.) However, the real life version, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was an actual antisemitic propaganda document that was later exposed as a fraud. Unfortunately, despite condemnation and repeated exposures in the press, it continues to be disseminated in certain areas of the world.
Watson and Holmes journey to Tsarist Russia, where their search takes them to dark places. The results of antisemitism and authoritarian rule are everywhere. There is one chapter that is heart-wrenching as it portrays the affects of a pogrom on two survivors. Even the normally stoic Sherlock Holmes is unnerved. His anguish, though understated, made me like him all the more.
Overall, this is a well-written novel that makes some serious points.
As Holmes notes, lies left unchecked develop strength and credibility. Lies, such as those presented in the Protocols and other propaganda, fuel fears.
The target of those fears? Anyone other than us. Jews, immigrants, anyone who isn’t like us. We hate what we fear. Everywhere we look today, we can see the results of hatred. The book is both an entertaining story and a warning.
Thanks to NetGalley and St. Martin’s Press for a complimentary copy in exchange for an honest review.
Nicholas Meyer presents us with another ‘newly discovered’ Sherlock Holmes case from Dr. Watson’s diaries in The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols. Mycroft Holmes summons his brother Sherlock Holmes to investigate a murder and a document being circulated that warns that a secret group is bent on taking over the world. The document appears to be part of a conspiracy to foment and spur trouble.
My husband and I both read The Seven-Per-Cent Solution by Nicholas Meyer when it came out in 1974. He offered a new view of the perpetually popular Sherlock Holmes. Later my brother shared his copy of Meyer’s third Holmes mystery, The West End Horror. I thought this would be a fun read.
Soon after I got into the book I discovered this story is more than entertainment. The story of a secret group is ‘fake news’ being used for political purposes.
Now, where have we heard that story before?
It is 1905 and Watson is married to a suffragette and has built a practice. Holmes notes that crimes are getting bigger. Electric lights are replacing gas. There is an uprising in Russia and Czar Nicholas is struggling to maintain control. The Jews are looking for a homeland, perhaps in Uganda.
Holmes, of course, needs Watson’s assistance; they are not so sure about the help of a female radical socialist, Anna Strunsky. Her beauty alone is problematic for the married Watson. Watson’s wife made him pledge to end to his risky adventures with Holmes. Will his marriage survive–or his practice? But this is no regular murder investigation; behind the murder is a plot that will set Europe careening into mass hysteria and death.
The three make a journey on the Orient Express to Odessa, Russia. Proving the document a fake is essential. Thousands of lives hang in the balance. Or is it already too late? Once fake news is in the world, it tends to stay there.
People love to place blame on something concrete, some ‘other’ as the source of their problems.
This is a fun read, filled with historical references and events, political intrigue, a kidnapping, and an expansion of the classic characters of Watson and Holmes. But the underlying message is serious, chilling, and sadly, timeless.
I was granted access to a free egalley by the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.
This book has everything I look for! It’s a smart, funny, historical, infinitely compelling combo. I recommend it 100%!
The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols” by Nicholas Meyer takes a novel approach to revisiting the classic stories of Sherlock Holmes as documented by Dr. John Watson. Meyer mixes a semblance of reality with an historic diary, an intellectual pursuit, and a scholarly task. The narrator is an academician specializing in Holmes, and he is overjoyed to be asked to examine a previously unknown diary by Watson.
Myer presents a diary written by “Watson,” in the typical conversational style that contains descriptions of the action, procedures, and conversations surrounding the main investigation as well as comments about the supporting events. There are lots of first person reflections as well. Readers are immediately immersed in the language, culture and atmosphere of the time and are transported to all the exotic places that typically define the adventures of Holmes and Watson. The familiar players are all present and accounted for, both friend and foe, as well as a few new ones, whom the narrator quickly identifies in his footnotes and comments on the diary. As always for Holmes and Watson, things are not as the first seem, and there is plenty of deception, deduction, and chasing clues.
I received a review copy of “The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols” from Nicholas Meyer, St Martin’s Press, and Minotaur Books. I have always enjoyed the original Holmes and Watson stories but have frequently been disappointed by modern interpretations that just miss the mark, however, not this time. The prose is authentic without being pretentious, the storyline is compelling, and the investigations along the way are typically Holmes. The use of the “found” diary allows new characters to be added to the mix without being hollow. I loved this interpretation. It is hard to beat the original, but this book comes close.
The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols by Nicholas Meyer is a Sherlock Holmes and Dr John Watson mystery. It was an extremely informative book in which I learned a tremendous amounts about the Zionists in the early 1900’s. It is easy to forget how long the conflict over Israel has been going on and the political maneuvering it took to get it where it is today. Holmes and Watson traveled out of England, all the way to Russia to try to stop a rumor from spreading, which of course, was just as difficult then as it is now. What they found along the way was fascinating, from dangers on a train to the damage caused by pogroms in Russia. There were variations from the traditional Sherlock stories, including a second wife for Watson, Juliet; a possible sexual entanglement for Holmes (unheard of!); and Homes becoming emotionally entangled in a case.
While Meyer has written an enjoyable book, in my opinion, he has wandered too far of the reservation. The prose was cumbersome too often, and although the story was good, there were too many threads left hanging. I am a Homes aficionado and I enjoy reading other authors that have picked up the story and run with it, but I didn’t warm to this one as much as I have to some of the others. Which is not to say it is not an interesting and intriguing book and worth a reader’s time, if her is so inclined. I am not sorry I spent my time with it. I recommend it with slight reservations.
I received a free ARC of The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols from Netgalley. All opinions and interpretations contained herein are solely my own. #netgalley #theadventureofthepeculiarprotocols
I grew up watching old Sherlock Holmes’ movies with Basil Rathbone so any Sherlock book I read I always compare the two. I was excited to see this book, I had read one by this author years ago. For me it felt true to other Sherlock Holmes books I’ve read. I’m not sure if I cared for the historical part of the story. I enjoyed the story and it kept my attention. Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for the early copy