Tuesday 20 July 2010

Book Review: THE BAKER STREET PHANTOM BY FABRICE BOURLAND



Genre: Supernatural Detective Fiction

Published by: Gallic Books (2nd August 2010)

Pages: 183 (Paperback)

My Rating: 8.5/10









THE BAKER STREET PHANTOM BY FABRICE BOURLAND

About the Book:

Two intrepid heroes.
A world of seances and ghosts.
Mysterious events at the home of Sherlock Holmes.


My Thoughts:

The year is 1932 and Andrew Singleton and James Trelawney decide to move from Boston, USA to London, England to set up their detective agency.

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's widow is their first client and when she starts telling them of strange ghostly disturbances at 221 Baker Street and of how she fears a premonition of something terrible about to occur they are not in agreement as to what to do next. Singleton, the narrator, who doesn't believe in ghosts, says to his colleague (after the widow had left) 'If someone had told me that I would travel from Boston to London to hear such nonsense!' ......... and from Lady Conan Doyle no less!'

Trelawney states 'The way I see it .................. is that we finally have a case to get our teeth into. That's good enough for me!'

Of course, they decide to take the case and are then plunged into the world of the supernatural while attending a seance and summoning up the ghost of Sherlock Holmes. At the same time many grisly murders are being committed on the streets of London and which seem to be recreations of murders from classic Victorian novels.

Can this be a co-incidence, is there a copycat killer/s or are the killers 'not of this world'? Could Sherlock Holmes really help them? This is what our intrepid heroes attempt to find out.

I really enjoyed this book, I especially liked the friendly interaction between the two detectives who were both very likeable characters. The story had just the right amount of pace as the suspense built up.

This is an excellent translated version of Fabrice Bourland's novel which was very readable, the words flowed quickly and easily. It was interesting to read the author's blurb on the back of the book which read "My writing is a combination of detective and fantasy fiction. I am reviving a subgenre of crime fiction that was very popular in the past, that of detectives of 'the strange' or 'the occult'. I think his words sum up this book very nicely. This is his first book in the 'Singleton and Trelawney' series and I shall be watching out for his others.

I read this book as part of the Bookdagger Real Readers Programme. This was an uncorrected proof copy.
If interested in becoming a part of the programme click here for more information.

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