Title: The Italian Secretary
Author: Caleb Carr
I was a huge fan of two of Caleb Carr's previous books, The Alienist and The Angel of Darkness (and if you're a fan of either historical fiction or mysteries, they're must-reads), and so I had pretty high hopes going into The Italian Secretary. But I should have remembered how much I disliked the Sherlock Holmes books I read in college during my senior seminar on British Mystery novels. Holmes's attitude bugged me in the original books, and continued to bug me in this novel, which was commissioned by some sort of Sherlock Holmes fan group. I did eventually (after about 150 pages) get into the story and enjoyed the last half of the book, but the first half was pretty slow-going. And Carr fails to answer my most pressing question about Holmes and Watson-- why do two professional, fussy, well-educated, presumably wealthy men live together? Is there something more going on than crime-solving?
--originally published 6/18/06
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