We’ve said it before but it bears repeating, especially at this time of the year; James Lovegrove is the one true custodian of the ongoing period-accurate ‘new’ adventures of Sherlock Holmes and his trusty sidekick Dr John Watson. We’ve loved several of his recent novels – The Christmas Demon and The Beast of the Stapletons especially – and he’s done it again with this glorious new triumvirate of tales set, as the title suggests, during the cold, eerie winter season. Lovegrove’s books are determinedly sit-in-front-of-a-roaring-fire treats and The Three Winter Terrors is absolutely no exception.
Each of the stories here appears to involve some disturbing supernatural manifestation or other; an ancient wronged spirit stalking a remote boys’ boarding school in ‘The Witch’s Curse’, a restless, wronged phantom in ‘The Cotton Mill Ghost’ and a slavering monstrous flesh-eating animal in ‘The Yukon Cannibal’. As ever, it falls to Sherlock Holmes to uncover the truth during his investigations and, as ever, the truth involves complex webs of lies, deception and covered tracks. Lovegrove’s new work differs from his earlier classics in that there is a clever dovetailing connection between each of the stories which share a certain singular commonality of theme and incident and even character. As ever, he beautifully evokes the spirit of Conan Doyle’s original stories, peppering his gorgeously-considered text with little references for long-time Holmes aficionados and delivering, tortuously but wonderfully, a magnificent “No shit, Sherlock” joke whose audacity would be enough to make you take your top hat off to Lovegrove if you were so minded to wear one.
But Lovegrove is not just another hack churning out routine detective stories. He knows Holmes and Watson inside out and his characterisation of the pair is faultless and he clearly relishes recreating Conan Doyle’s style with rich, mannered dialogue that floats from the page and he delights in placing our heroes in cold, remote, middle-of-winter settings where they can crunch across snowy fields and through desolate woods and wander around the corridors of great, chilly family country homes and stately mansions occupied by people with secrets they’d rather keep hidden.
Lovegrove’s plotting and attention to detail are hugely-impressive as he lays clues in each story that build upon one another before reaching a climax in the exciting and dramatic ‘Yukon Cannibal’ and the subtle links between each apparently entirely-unconnected investigation are woven effortlessly and, at times almost imperceptibly. Only when you’ve finished the book will you really be able to fully appreciate just how cleverly and artfully Lovegrove has delivered one huge, overarching narrative split into three distinct but connected tales.
Another delightful seasonal treat from James Lovegrove and we really think it’s time we saw these gorgeous stories realised for the TV screen. Now that the fixation on a tiresome, modern, mobile-phone obsessed Sherlock has thankfully passed, we need the character to get right back to his roots as a Victorian gentleman eccentric. No one is better qualified to write those stories than James Lovegrove. Glorious stuff.
Sherlock Holmes and the Three Winter Terrors is available now from Titan Books
