Unquiet Spirits: A Sherlock Holmes Adventure

Bonnie MacBird, HarperCollins, £14.99

Award-winning Hollywood screenwriter and producer Bonnie MacBird has created a trilogy of Sherlock Holmes adventures, written in the style of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. In the second book of the trilogy, Unquiet Spirits, ghosts, whisky and murder take Holmes and Watson to the South of France and the Highlands of Scotland.

Fresh from solving the mystery of the hound of the Baskervilles, Sherlock Holmes has returned to London, only to find himself the target of a deadly vendetta. But when beautiful Scotswoman Isla McLaren arrives with a tale of kidnapping, ghosts, and dynamite in the Highlands, he declines in favour of a political mission for his brother Mycroft in the south of France – much to Watson’s surprise.

On the riviera, Holmes and Watson have a dangerous encounter with rival French detective Jean Vidocq and make a horrific discovery that draws them up to the haunted McLaren castle in Scotland, after all. Soon Holmes discovers that all three cases have blended into a single, deadly conundrum. But to solve the mystery, the ultimate rational thinker must confront a ghost from his own past.

Having grown up on a diet of detective fiction (among other genres) and Conan Doyle’s original Sherlock Holmes stories in particular, I started off comparing Bonnie’s writing style to the originals. However, it was so authentic that

I soon forgot it was by a different writer, subconsciously accepting it as a complementary addition to Conan Doyle’s canon. Apart from one or two phrases that jarred as being anachronistic, it was a convincing and gripping adventure that Conan Doyle himself would have been proud of.

See article on Bonnie MacBird on page 25.

Review: Caroline Lindsay