Sherlock Holmes fans will find themselves transported beyond the frequent mimic of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Victorian writing. Gretchen Altabef’s Sherlock Holmes: Five Miles of Country is likely to draw those who like innovation and a twist on the normally male-dominated buddy stories tied to the genre like bees to a hive. Even those well read in MX Publishing’s output cannot claim a complete knowledge of the depth of Holmes lore until they’ve read this tale, largely set in the New York City/New Jersey area. To avoid spoilers, I won’t reveal more specifics about the plot than can be found in the author’s synopsis.
Written in a different voice than most John Watson chronicles, the 1896 romp is a tightly researched plot that pulls the Baker Street detective into the birth of movies in the United States. The nascent art form is new, as is the homicide method. Yet, more impressive is the author’s handling of the real history that surrounds a fictional dancer’s death. Altabef rolls in a cast of familiar celebrities such as the New Jersey-based inventor Thomas Edison, Vaudeville’s Harry Houdini and Theodore Roosevelt, a commissioner who tamed the NYPD, peppered with fictional women.
The novel introduces a different role for Holmes’ heartthrob Irene Adler and a previously unknown myth-chaser Rachel Holmes. Adler whom Doyle debuts in “A Scandal in Bohemia” in 1891, is always a sort of white whale for the famous detective. Altabef marries the pair as a means to add notions of Holmes as more of a real man rather than a male that views women as a distraction. Also, the fabled opera singer turns producer and touches on the real racial segregation that existed on Broadway during America’s Gilded Age and ghostly haunts along the Great White Way. Rachel Holmes’ pursuit to film a creature said to inhabit the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey adds to the book’s step away from male-dominated sagas where women tend to be rescued or rotten.
Five Miles of Country’s mystery is solid, and its murder resolution is clever. Readers who wonder what prompted the author will find the answer in the Acknowledgments in the final chapter. “Writing is the art of creating something from seemingly nothing,” Altabef declares. “The ‘nothing’ is the invisible magic of synergistic synthesis that goes on inside the artist’s mind.”
Altabef’s fresh take on so many plot elements that could have been stale makes a pleasurable read. Give it a try. You will want more.
