Sherlock Holmes and the Hellfire Heirs

Walsh’s disappointing sixth novel-length Holmes pastiche (after 2022’s Sherlock Holmes and The Curse of Neb-Heka-Ra) sees the investigator sniffing out a potential human trafficking operation. Lucille Turner, a friend of Holmes’s landlady, Mrs. Hudson, comes to the detective bereft: her 14-year-old niece, Charity, recently responded to a newspaper ad offering a companion position and then vanished without a trace. When Lucille visited the address posted in the ad, she found it vacant. Holmes takes her case and soon learns that three other girls, including the goddaughter of police superintendent Lestrade, have recently disappeared under similar circumstances. Aided by Lestrade, Holmes and Watson search for the missing girls, whom they fear may have fallen prey to slavers. Their investigation unearths rumors of a private club for dissolute members of the nobility who call themselves the Hellfire Heirs, and Holmes, Watson, and Lestrade set out to use their aristocratic connections to infiltrate the club. Walsh falters in a number of key categories for a successful Holmes pastiche: the twists are predictable, Holmes isn’t given much chance to display his intellect, and there are too many digressions (including lengthy passages about the meals Mrs. Hudson prepares) that don’t pay off. There’s no shortage of excellent new Holmes mysteries in the traditional style; readers should seek out one of them, like Philip Purser-Hallard’s Sherlock Holmes: The Monster of the Mere, instead. (Nov.)