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Anthony Horowitz is my new favorite writer. I was so impressed with The House of Silk that I read another one of his recent books called The Sentence is Death.
For the first time in its one-hundred-and-twenty-five-year history, the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate has authorized a new Sherlock Holmes novel. Having read this page turner, I can see why Doyle’s estate deemed Horowitz worthy of writing a Sherlock Holmes novel. Horowitz has upheld the spirit and voices of Holmes and Watson and sustained a Victorian atmosphere of late nineteenth century London, while at the same time offering the reader a new, fresh adventure with his own spin.
Horowitz is the author of a modern day Holmes/Watson series which features Daniel Hawthorne and himself. The dynamic between Holmes/Watson and Hawthorne/Horowitz is similar. Holmes is definitely more eccentric than Hawthorne. Both series are written from the perspective of the author - Watson and Horowitz. The book allows the author to conduct a running commentary on the process of writing a story, while poking fun at himself. Holmes is the genius and is always a few steps ahead. Watson is like the reader, never quite gets the full story and is slowly putting the pieces together until the very end. This makes for an entertaining, suspenseful read.
"Show Holmes a drop of water and he would deduce the existence of the Atlantic. Show it to me and I would look for a tap. That was the difference between us." – Watson
In this book, we are taken to the dark side of London as Holmes and Watson investigate a case that begins with a gang of thieves in Boston called the Flat Cap gang and somehow the story makes its way across the Atlantic to London. Holmes' brother, Mycroft, warns him to not get involved. But, Holmes does everything to immerse himself into such a threat.
There are many twists and turns in this plot. I was never bored. Like Watson, I could not keep up with Holmes. Horowitz's writing style is very good. He gives his characters a nice arc and you can feel sympathy, anger, hatred, contempt, love and all the other emotions towards the characters as you read this story. My favorite is the description of a gang of boys that Sherlock calls on for assistance in his detective work in exchange for a penny or two:
"A scruffier, more ragged bunch would be hard to imagine, boys between the ages of eight and fifteen, held together by dirt and grime, their clothes so cut about and stitched back together that it would be impossible to say to how many other children they must have at some time belonged."
Overall, I highly recommend The House of Silk if you are a fan of the Sherlock Holmes stories or of well-written detective novels in general. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and I think this might actually be the best fictional detective story I read in 2019.
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