Sherlock Holmes: The Next Generation

Book review The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes by Leonard Goldberg

by Theresa Gauthier

This isn’t the first time an author has imagined life from the point of view of a relative of Sherlock Holmes.  Brothers, daughters, sisters, sons—there are myriad reimagining of the world Sir Arthur Conan Doyle gifted to the world.

The newest addition to the fray is Leonard Goldberg’s The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes. An excellent premise, that Irene Adler and Sherlock Holmes did indeed take their attraction and admiration to the ultimate limit and produced a child, is only part of the plot.  Including Dr. John Watson and his son (also a doctor named John Watson) brings a continuity that only aids the story’s believability. 

Providing an heir to Holmes’s intellect and eccentricities and a counterpart in Watson’s son lends the book an air of believability and yet allows the freedom to explore new territory.

Investigating an apparent suicide with eyewitnesses whose stories do not agree, Watson and Watson meet Joanna Blalock and her son Johnnie.  Amidst a series of murders and myriad clues including the deciphering of an indecipherable code, the trio manages to solve the crime, which does have a couple of twists worthy of a Sherlockian tale.

At times, it got mired down in a false sense of its own cleverness. Belaboring the point and hitting the reader over the head with things that were far too obvious to be surprising or impressive, the story wasn’t nearly the page-turner I expected. 

Of course, just when I thought maybe I wouldn’t finish the book, it would surprise me with something that I hadn’t predicted.

This is a London after the passing of Sherlock Holmes. Time has moved on and so have the people who surrounded Holmes during his time as the Great Detective. This is a London of the twentieth century, pre World War II, and still an Empire.  Dr. Watson Senior provides a needed living link to Holmes.  The character is familiar and is a believable progression of the character into old age.  His son is all too ready to embrace his share of dangers in seeing the investigation through to the end. 

The world’s most famous consulting detective has never truly gone out of style, and the shelves of most book stores, new and used, contain not only the original stories, but also the newer adventures.  Countless volumes of anthologies compile stories by disparate authors such as Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, and Michael Moorcock. 

Laurie R. King has her own take on the detective with her excellent Mary Russell books, and Graham Moore’s The Sherlockian is one I never tire of recommending. 

I do think The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes is a good book, and I did enjoy it.  I wanted to love it.  

NOTE: This review is about the first book in Goldberg’s series. 

Reading List:

Novels:

The Sherlockian by Graham Moore

The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes series 

Laurie R. King’s Mary Russell series starting with The Beekeeper’s Apprentice

Anthologies:

The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, ed. By John Joseph Adams.

A Study in Sherlock, ed. By Laurie R. King.

Sherlock Holmes in America ed. By Martin H. Greenberg