Sherlock Holmes & the Case of the Twain Papers

This is my first exposure to the works of Roger Riccard and will confess to being underwhelmed at best. Certainly the settings, characterizations and characters are faithfully rendered but the author seems to forget at times that the core of any good mystery is its plot. The further you stray from that the weaker the work. The story meandered from here to there and took absences to digress into realms that provided information but didn't contribute to creating a barn-burning story. At times there would be additional attention paid to which street followed another and being tossed in more in a ‘by the way’ manner as opposed to constituting information essential to plot development.

One realm Mr. Riccard excelled in was the use of annotations although he did include more from some of the Conan Doyle works than I would have preferred. It’s aggravating at times when a writer of a Holmes/Watson tale will assume that all English speakers know what some of the words, places and allusions are all about. They should have mercy on people like me (Native Californian born in Los Angeles) who speak read and write American solely. It’s not about varied spellings like ‘plough’ as opposed to ‘plow.’ If pastiche writers would give some equivalents to English money it would do good things for those of us like me who live up the 10 Freeway from Mr Riccard in a university town approximately midway between Los Angeles and Palm Springs. A mention that Holmes gave someone a Sovereign provides little info especially if you are in the midst of a stirring tale.
As noted, he provided explanations of various terms, events and places that kept the narrative on track. Kudos to him for that although some of the explanations were somewhat long. Not so much praise for how the plot meandered aimlessly at times and the hapless reader began to wonder if the writer was being paid by the word.

So this is a decent outing although it’s been my experience lately that a number of writers are setting the bar pretty high. My next stop is to order up ‘Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Poisoned Lilly’. So stay tuned, Mr Riccard. By the way, I neglected to mention I am a retired English teacher who did 36 years in public schools and various universities. I know, you probably are groaning already. See you next time.

This is a fine pastiche. The author is clearly very familiar with the life and times of Holmes, and respectful of the conventions of the corpus of stories. My only criticism and reason that I don't give it 5 stars (and I'm sure Holmes would support me on this) is that the story contains too much romantic and irrelevant digression amongst the detection and deductions and could be profitably shortened.

What a flop. The "solution" to the "mystery" comes out of nowhere and is basically a slap in the face of the reader. The depiction of Mark Twain is totally flat... he never comes to life on the page for even a second, and the members of his family are ciphers. Holmes spends most of his time doing routine police work, almost none of which is related to the "solution" to the "mystery" of who stole several hundred typewritten pages that were part of Twain's autobiography. Meanwhile Watson is uselessly mooning over a woman from his past, whom he has encountered again by chance in the course of the pointless "investigation." His distracted state is so bad that not only Mrs. Hudson offers him Ann Landers/Dear Abby-style relationship advice, but also absurdly so does Holmes!
There is almost nothing here that is truly authentic in terms of the Canon, and fans of the Holmes-Watson adventures will find precious little to reward their page turning.

Roger Riccard’s pastiche, "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Twain Papers," does an outstanding job of recreating England in early 1900. From motorcars on muddy roads to theaters in Bristol, Riccard offers ample detail to provide credibility to his narrative.

Such authenticity is important for getting an audience to accept the reality of Holmes’ celebrated client. Happily, the Samuel Clemens who arrives at Baker Street in search of Holmes’ help fulfills our expectations of the man more commonly known as Mark Twain. In a clever bit of plotting, Twain hires the great detective to recover a briefcase full of missing papers, a collection of anecdotes and stories that Twain intends to include in his autobiography.

Mark Twain comes most alive when Riccard describes a performance delivered by the humorist at the Theatre Royal in Drury Lane. As Twain recounts a number of humorous tales—some familiar, some not—we recognize the pacing, the pausing, the smoking so long associated with Twain’s dry delivery. Equally recognizable are his wife Livy and daughter Jean, who were, in fact, together with him in London at the time.

Other supporting characters in the novel present surprises. Some are familiar from earlier stories in the canon, but most striking is a group that Holmes refers to as “possible players in this game.” Suffice it to say that when I attempted to determine whether the man named “Gilbert Hodges"--described as a representative of Century Magazine--was, a fictional character, I kept encountering the name of “Gil Hodges,” former first-baseman for the Brooklyn and Los Angeles Dodgers. Baseball fans take note: similar clues in the novel suggest that such duplication is more than coincidence.

Roger Riccard is an entertaining writer with many talents. See them on display in "Sherlock Holmes and the Case of the Twain Papers."

In my review of Riccard’s first work, Sherlock Holmes & The Case of the Poisoned Lilly, I hoped for more to come from this author. It has taken two years, but he has certainly delivered on that request.
Sherlock Holmes & The Case of the Twain Papers has again captured Doyle’s characters much in the way that Brett and Hardwicke played them on screen. There is the usual banter, deductions, observations and bits of humor. The use of historical events, people and places is nicely woven in. The personality of Samuel Clemens, as himself and as Mark Twain, is true to character. Riccard has even taken several of Twain’s actual quotes and inserted them in ways that fit the context of this adventure.
There is a nice pacing to the story and it continually pulls the reader forward. Again Riccard has put forth some theories about canonical questions without forcing actual solutions upon the reader. An added bonus for Holmes fans to ponder.
The publisher, Baker Street Studios, is said to be putting forth this book at the Sherlock Holmes Exhibition at the London Museum in Oct. 2014. It is an honor well-deserved. The Sherlockian E-Times has called Riccard the best pastiche writer since Val Andrews.
Again I say, let’s hope there is more to come from this author.