The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Great War

In 1917, orderly Augusta Watson, the narrator of this excellent Sherlock Holmes pastiche from Guerrier (The Time Travellers and other Doctor Who novels), is doing the necessary scut work to keep an English military hospital in Belgium functioning. Her life’s upended when Holmes, a man whose misogyny she finds offensive, arrives at the hospital, ostensibly just to observe its operations. The astute Watson, who’s unrelated to Dr. Watson, deduces that he has another objective in mind, and the sleuth confirms that he’s looking into the death of Capt. Philip Ogle-Thompson. The absence of any records of the captain’s presence contradicts the commanding general’s letter to Ogle-Thompson’s mother, which stated that her son died peacefully in the hospital. Watson is assigned to drive Holmes to the front, where he seeks out the captain’s unit and finds evidence that his death—an apparent battlefield suicide—may be connected to an insidious plot to undermine troop morale. This Watson is an appealing and capable sidekick, unafraid to stand up to the legendary, sometimes acerbic Holmes. Fans of the pastiche subgenre involving Conan Doyle’s detective in WWI won’t want to miss this one. (Nov.)