This isn’t a book review blog, but I do review a lot of books here. So I think you deserve to know where I’m coming from when I do that – my premises and my prejudices.
First of all, I don’t review books I can’t say something nice about. If it’s that bad, it’s not worth my timing writing about or your time reading about. More importantly, I may think it’s bilgewater, but the author didn’t. When somebody invests the time and effort to write a book, then that should be respected. So if I can’t say anything nice, I won’t say anything.
(By the way, there is a theoretical exception to the above: Sometimes best-selling authors get to the point when they really aren’t working at it anymore, and no editor will edit them because they’re too successful. They deserve to be called out for their laziness. I haven’t encountered that situation in the Sherlockian world, however.)
Another major premise of mine is that literary likes and dislikes are just a matter of taste. My tastes are no more definitive than yours, so I try not to apply adjectives that imply some objective judgment. I just say what I like about a particular book and why, hoping that I give you enough information so you can tell whether or not you would like it also. And I may say what I didn’t like, while accentuating the positive.
As a general rule – sorry about this! -- I don’t enjoy pastiches much because the writing style is never exactly right, and sometimes it’s way wrong. (I’m more likely to enjoy a Sherlock Holmes book written in the third person or from a non-Watson viewpoint.) But I know that many others enjoy them and I try to be fair in my reviews. After all, who can come up to the standard of the original?
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