Warlock Holmes: A Study in Brimstone
Series: Warlock Holmes, Book 1
By: G. S. Denning / Narrated By: Robert Garson
Length: 9 hrs and 54 mins
A delightful series that adds to the whole Sherlock Holmes legacy… but with a twist!
The twist? Uhm, the Supernatural, of COURSE!
It starts like this, see:
Dr. John Watson is down on his luck. Wounded after a horrifying stint as a doctor during the Battle of Maiwand in Afghanistan (Why, he thought he was going to be lollygagging in India, where NObody gets shot!), limping, depressed, down to his last shilling, he needs SOMEthing to go right in his life. So when he uses that last shilling to buy a spot o’ lunch for a friend he runs into, and the friend discovers Watson needs a place to live? The friend pretty much draaaags him to see a man, certainly an okay man, certainly not an odd man, certainly NOT a TOTAL freakazoid of a man, all in an effort to switch out himself for Watson in a roommate situation.
Enter Warlock Holmes, found bludgeoning a dead body, shouting at it as though it somehow offended him by something it said.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. A total freakazoid of a man, but the rent’ll be good, like, unbelievably good, and thus we have Watson and Holmes, a team.
Almost from the first, Watson notices oddities: There’re the times Holmes spaces out, and an unnatural and guttural voice comes forth, making pronouncements; there are the smells of sulfur coming from Holmes’s room; there're the times Holmes dashes around prodding and shouting that NOW is the time for Watson to scoot, scoot, scoot, leeeeave the house, get out and take a walk in the park, scoot, like, yes, NOW!!!
And then the cases start. Detectives from Scotland Yard, an ogre, a vampire, sometimes come calling when there are… odd… cases to be solved. Cases with… perhaps? yes? supernatural? tones. At those times, Watson joins Holmes in viewing crime scenes where they have to pull the vampire from the pools of blood, where they have to stop the ogre from treading gracelessly all over the place.
Warlock Holmes is a series of cases, adventures as Watson comes to call them, that are written with a light hand, written with a tongue firmly planted in cheek, written with a great amount of free-hearted humor. I never laughed out loud (Well, except for one total guffaw), but I grinned mightily and chuckled and, yes, snorted throughout it. It takes the well-known trope and adds things like the Baker Street Irregulars (Rat-boys anyone?); takes an investigation and turns it into a Happily Ever After (Uhm, yeah, uhm, with DEMONS); has Watson trying to teach Warlock skills of observation rather than relying on the freakily supernatural demonic possession that makes Holmes feel all self-conscious.
Carrying us through it all is Robert Garson’s top-notch performance. He has Holmes as an odd-duck, earnestly trying not to be so freakily supernatural but TOTALLY unable to help himself. If it walks like an arthromancer, and talks like an arthromancer, then by god, run like hell! And he truly shines as Watson, making him serious, making him spastic, making him the one who’s actually developed the keen observational skills. And at the end Garson has Watson interviewing one young woman, all the while thinking just how great she’d be as the mother of his children, explaining how Holmes and he would serve her then waxing poetic about the fineness of her perfect cheekbones. Garson carries both the main text and dialogue so very well then he zips us through the action scenes. I must admit tho’ that, x1.25 speed listener that I am, I had to move it to x1.5 at times. I dunno if this was cuz it was necessary for the delivery of action or if I was just in a twitchy kinda mood.
As stated, I guffawed only once, and some of the cases were more enjoyable than others, but I truly enjoyed this twist on the regular Holmes stories. I loooved Holmes, I adored Watson. I enjoyed the good-hearted and tender ogre; I enjoyed the easily-offended by anything-that-had-the-temerity-to-exist vampire.
What I didn’t like? The fact that this first book in the series ended with SUCH a tease that it makes getting the second book an absolute necessity. And, yes, I liked it that much!
grumble grumble grumble, however…
Oh, well. Just another book to add to my Wish List…
As an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.