Book Note: Sherlock Holmes and the Globe Murders

Day, Barry. Sherlock Holmes and the Globe Murders. London: Oberon, 1997.

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Based on the quality of the book, the quality of the writing, and the excessive number of typos and inconsistencies, I think Oberon Press must be a vanity press—a self-publishing haven.

That said, Sherlock Holmes and the Globe Murders is not that terrible. At its best, it sounds like a long-lost Sherlock Holmes novel. At its worst, which is mainly in the dialogue sections, it sounds both cliché and anachronistic.

It's the plot that made the novel worth reading. A group in Sherlock Holmes' London is working on rebuilding the Globe Theatre to give Londoners an authentic experience of how many of Shakespeare's plays were originally staged. But not everyone is happy about that—especially the person who keeps sending threatening quotes from Shakespeare plays to the actors and entrepreneurs involved.

Then people start dying in ways that are related to various deaths in Shakespeare's plays. It's somewhat reminiscent of the Vincent Price film Theatre of Blood (for which, q.v.), but with the sharp-eyed detective on the case.

Here's a quick sample:

It's not a great novel, but it's worth reading as a fun return to the genre of Sherlock Holmes.

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