![]() ![]() Watson’s appearances in prologue and epilogue are pitch-perfect his stand-in on this case-fusty, grumpy Ivan-suffers by contrast. While the framework of a new narrator, pseudonyms, and deep masquerade creates space for improvisation, it’s a double-edged sword that invites comparison to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s iconic duo. ![]() In addition to its overarching case, the book makes moves to address the “locked-room mystery” of Holmes as a person. With a compelling central mystery, the novel makes excellent use of familiar historical figures to evoke a complex social world. The task leads from Parisian art galleries to van Gogh’s deathbed, where suicide more closely resembles murder. ![]() They are tasked with finding several Old Masters paintings after the Louvre discovers that the ones they’ve been displaying are fakes. Holmes, masquerading as Monsieur Vernet, travels with a continental art historian called Ivan. Styled as a latter-day continuation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories, Timothy Miller’s novel encompasses famous painters and shady art world figures as Holmes attempts to track down a ring of forgers and solve Vincent van Gogh’s suspicious death. Watson, who did not participate in the case, begins to read. Watson inherits his private papers, and a posthumous sorting yields an unexpected treasure: an unpublished manuscript detailing a case in France. After a long retirement and longer life, Sherlock Holmes is dead. ![]()
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