Since I began reading the Outlander series by Diana Gabaldon I have been searching for something equally entertaining to keep me reading until the next book comes out in 2009. Its been a chore. She's spoiled me for just about anything else!But thanks to Mystery Scene Magazine I have found a fun new series that I can enjoy. I review books for them and they sent me Steve Hockensmith's latest novel in the Holmes on the Range series: The Black Dove. It will be released in bookstores in February, 2008. But the good news it is the third in the series, so there are two Anthony, Agatha, Dilly and Edgar award nominated books to read before the third is released.
My review will appear in the Mystery Scene Magazine sometime before February, 2008, but let me just say here that I could gush on and on about this well written book. Truly a well written, thought out, constructed, imagined, plotted book. Love, love, love the tone, the one liners -- I laughed out loud in several spots. Just couldn't stop myself; even scared the cat.
The idea of the historic series is that two brothers, down-on-their-luck cowboys, become infatuated with Sherlock Holmes, a serial of his adventures appears in the Harper's Magazine and one of the brothers even tries his hand at writing the brothers' exploits for a magazine. These cowboys decide they want to be detectives. Told in the narration of the younger brother 'Big Red' it is hilarious. Asides and relationship issues between the dower older brother and gregarious younger sibling. Multi faceted story line.
It is as the author admits, a combining of two very different eras -- the restrictive repressive Victorian era of Holmes and the wild, wild west of the 1890s.
The part I really like is that the author does not make light of death or moral issues. He highlights them and his protagonists are moral, upright, honorable, hilarious knights of the open range.
If you get a chance, please try Hockensmith's series, beginning with "Holmes on the Range" and followed by "On the Wrong Track"
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