Recently I got my hands on a Sherlock Holmes novel that I'd been wanting to read for a long time. A friend with great literary taste (she likes my work) loved it, so I expected to love it, too. But I didn't.
In fact, I so didn't love the book that I stopped reading it in the middle of a chapter, on page 136 out of 617, hating myself for wasting even that much time on it. Why didn't I like it? For one thing, the once-shocking trope that almost everything Watson wrote was untrue has become trite. But the breaking point for me was when Sherlock Holmes killed in cold blood. Sherlock did that, but Holmes never would.
Has this ever happened to you - a book you had reason to look forward to (especially a mystery or a Holmes adventure) so disappointed you that you couldn't even soldier on through to the end?
A book has to be really bad or boring for me not to finish it; it has happened but not with a Holmes pastiche. However, a read very few for pleasure these days as I have been burned once too often by poorly-written pastiches and had a much higher tolerance for them in my youth. It sounds like your referring to The Veiled Detective, which, while well-written, I didn't care for. However, I did like The Last Sherlock Holmes Story when it came out. Go figure.
ReplyDeleteYou know, Dan, I strongly suspect that I even translated this one novel… or an equally faulted one. And yes, yes, it was awful.
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