Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon

By: James Lovegrove / Narrated By: Dennis Kleinman

Length: 8 hrs and 45 mins

Boooo! HISSSSS!!! This is what happens when ya go into a story with >dang it all!< Expectations!!!

I got Sherlock Holmes and the Christmas Demon on sale. I mean, I bought it wham! imMEDiately as I’d adored author James Lovegrove’s Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows. THAT particular story was a paranormal creepfest o’ desperately Outta This World escapades. Lovegrove had me soooo hooked that, yessss: Another Holmes & Watson tale, this one with a Demon, this one set at Christmas? Ho Ho I’m sooo THERE Ho!

Didn’t read the Publisher’s Summary, not that THAT would’ve enlightened me, but went and bought this posthaste, nary a question asked. And with Dennis Kleinman doing the honors yet agian? How, oh HOW, could I wind up anything less than terribly pleased and happy?

Oh, dude! there’s that saying: Expectations are just premeditated resentments…

And so I deeeeply resent what this audiobook turned out to be.

Mark me, tho: It’s NOT bad in ANY way… it’s just horRIFically DISAPPOINTING.

What we have. H&W are just jawing about a successful arrest of a jewel thief disguising himself as Santa Claus, and this brings a young woman, a weepy Eve Allerthorpe, outta the woodworks. She’s to inherit a substantial sum… IF… she can be judged of Sound Mind by her birthday this coming Christmas. Alas, she’s kinda sorta not doing so okay on that front as she’s spazzing near out of her mind by a haunting: She’s seen The Black Thurrick shambling across the frozen lake outside her window one verrrrry dark night; he’s all darkly black, somewhat spindly, -and- he was carrying a large sack ‘pon his shoulders, his eyes glowing evilly in the night. Further? He’s been leaving his calling card about the family estate: Bundles of birch branches, first by fences, then going ever much closer, depositing them outside, saaaay, HER window, her brother’s window. It’s terrifying the beJESus outta her.

H&W are more than ready to assist this damsel in distress, and so they travel to the Yorkshire estate of the Allerthorpe family, where they receive the rudest of welcomes, and where they receive the most dePLOrable accommodations in the place (Watson slept better on rocky ground during his battles in Afghanistan!).

Right away, things are getting havey-cavey, but Holmes is more than up to the task of sussing things out.

Delightful, right? I mean, Watson as a discerning sidekick and into reasoning his own way to figure out how things are shaping up (Cloooose, yet never quiiiiite there)? Holmes, laser-focused, observant as all get-out, tossing a red herring out here and there so that he might do his sleuthing without tipping his hand in any way, shape, or form?

I mean… >heavy sigh< … This was sooooo Canon, well-done, tightly plotted if not the most thrillingly paced. Holmes and Watson are true to the way Conan Doyle crafted them. So, Huzzah, right?

But oh my gosh: Where was the Demon? We have Watson’s imagination working overtime here and there during overnight stakeouts, but they come to nothing, of course. Holmes believes in nothing paranormal in this story, and time and time again, his hunches prove to be correct.

Nooooo!!! Say it ain’t so, Lovegrove! Where’s the paranormal Christmas DEMON! And for that matter? Where’s the freaking Christmas (Oh saaaay, in the last 20 minutes… uhm, or 10 minutes if you’ve been sooo terribly discouraged that you could NOT, for the life of you, listen at x1.2 speed and went on and jacked it up to x2 in an effort to cease your suffering… I admit it: I’m a wimp when it comes to so easily becoming disheartened!)? There were birch bundles, ooooh! There were ghost sightings, double ooooh! There were the occasional Things That Went BUMP In The Night, minor ooooh. -And- there was the sleepy Watson getting worked up whilst watching dense fog roll and twist itself into demonic shapes… which, I couldn’t help it: I kept HOPING would turn into SOMEthing, ANYthing creepy!

Dennis Kleinman? You rock, never got confused, and as the characters developed as the plot(s) unfolded, you managed a nice tempering of bad attitudes, and I never got mixed up by any of the characters during their back-and-forth conversations and musings. You handled the weepy Eve as she easily fell into Hysterics over Yet Another Bundle being found.

And I look forward to ANOTHER of your narrations. -BUT- it shall have to be in the second of the Cthulhu Casebooks series. I’m fond of Sherlock Holmes, really I am. But I was hoping for exsanguination and maybe even a decapitation or two… you know: Merry Christmas Stuff.

I’m easily dismayed, yes indeed. And please don’t lemme dissuade you if you’re fond of H&W of Canon as Lovegrove managed it so very well.

Just, dude! I was soooo prepped for something else.

My fault! It was meeeee, not the story.

And now I’m off to shoot m’ foot off… deservedly so…

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