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Audio CD Description Although Sherlock Holmes categorically dismissed, in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire," supernatural explanations for corporeal crimes ("This Agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. ... No ghosts need apply"), one of the most popular among Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes tales is The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), in which the fate of a Devonshire family supposedly hangs on the savage appetites of an apparitional beast. More than a century later, in The Italian Secretary, Caleb Carr again presents the hawk-faced consulting detective with a yarn woven of paranormal plot threads, the mystery this time rooted in the fatal 16th-century stabbing of David Rizzio, a music teacher and confidant to Mary, Queen of Scots. For Holmes and his affable annalist, Dr. John Watson, this spirited escapade begins sometime in the late 19th century with their receipt, in London, of an encrypted telegram from Sherlock's eccentric elder brother, Mycroft, "a senior but anonymous government official." It summons them to Edinburgh, Scotland, where architect Sir Alistair Sinclair and his foreman, Dennis McKay, have been slain in the midst of rehabilitating the medieval west tower of the Royal Palace of Holyrood--the very wing where Queen Mary had lived, and where Rizzio had met his brutal, politically motivated end. Mycroft fears these murders portend new threats against Britain's present monarch--the elderly Queen Victoria, who infrequently lodges at the palace--by a known assassin, perhaps in nefarious league with the German Kaiser. En route north, Holmes and Watson are menaced aboard their train by a red-bearded bomb thrower (supposedly a rabid Scots nationalist), only to discover that still greater dangers await them, and others, at Holyroodhouse. The plaintive drone of a weeping woman, cruelly punctured and shattered corpses, a pool of blood "that never dries," and a disembodied Italian voice with unexpected musical tastes all imply the wrath of wraiths behind recent atrocities. But Holmes and Watson deduce that greed, rather than ghosts, may be to blame. Carr, who earned renown with his historical mysteries, The Alienist (1994) and The Angel of Darkness (1997), apparently intended The Italian Secretary to be a short story; however, he couldn't stop writing. The result is a fleet-footed, atmospherically gothic, and often amusing Holmes tale (with an exposition scene in Watson's bed chamber that’s truly priceless), but one that makes scant attempt to enhance our understanding of Conan Doyle's characters--a less ambitious undertaking, in that respect, than Mitch Cullin's concurrently published A Slight Trick of the Mind. And while Carr displays a gift here for adopting another author's literary techniques, it is really his own style and series players that his fans are waiting to see more of in the future. --J. Kingston Pierce

Customer Reviews A DECENT DOYLE PASTICHE Caleb Carr who has written such excellent books as Killing Time and Angel of Darkness, returns to the Victorian era and tackles the world's most famous detective, Sherlock Holmes. Holmes' brother Mycroft sends an urgent telegram to his brother requesting his brother's aid in investigating some mysterious murders and threats against the Queen herself. The setting moves to a gloomy castle for the bulk of the book as there are those that believe a vengeful spirit is to blame for the brutal murders. Holmes and Watson begin their investigation and questioning of a group of possible suspects includinig, of course, the Butler. Carr does a very good job of capturing the essence of Victorian England with speech, mannerisms and settings. Holmes and Watson seem very "Doyle-esque". Carr also does a pretty decent imitation of Doyle in terms of tone but doesn't have Doyle's ability to really craft a complex mystery that is solveable by Holmes' legendary deductive skills. He kind of just figures things out without really relating how he did it and before you know it, the novel is over. This is one time where I wish about fifty pages had been added to the story. It just moves a bit too fast. All in all, a decent Pastiche but not as good some others... ...And What IS Truth? Asked Pilate...stranger than fiction The Raven sends Kudus to Caled Carr for this tremendous historical and haunting novel that leaves the reader begging like Oliver Twist, but for more of the same caliber stories , not more porrige! And I devoutly wish Ghosts of Baker Street would hurry up publication! Mr. Carr--to a true historian and a devout Sherlockian-- from-- another... Quoth the Raven Little to add to the Sherlock canon We hear that Carr undertook this project as a short story to add to the Sherlock Holmes history, but at book length it is little more than a minor tale puffed into too many pages. The result is a dry, unnuanced mystery that hardly seems to come from the author of the excellent "Alienist." That far more exciting read from ten years ago is recommended; better to give this one a pass.