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Mrs. Hudson sends Dr Watson an urgent message. 221B is on fire and she thinks Holmes did it. Holmes, who has only just been released from gaol (for reasons so delicate that Watson will not write about them), says the whole thing was an accident. While waiting for Holmes to recover enough to talk to him, Watson comes across two letters. One is from Mycroft Holmes; Holmes says to destroy it. The other is from a French singer, Emmeline La Victoire. There is a secret message, in invisible ink, in this letter. Mlle La Victoire has a son by the Earl of Pellingham, a son his wife is raising as her own. The son has been kidnapped and Mlle La Victoire seeks the help of Sherlock Holmes in finding the boy.
Mycroft and Holmes do meet. Mycroft wishes Holmes to help find the Marseilles Nike, which has been stolen and is presumably on its way to England. The two cases converge; the expected recipient of the Nike is none other than the noted art collector, the Earl of Pellingham. In investigating the two cases, Holmes and Watson go to France, go to the north of England, disguise themselves, get involved in all sorts of escapades - none of this is unusual for the duo; as much as Holmes enjoys the intellectual challenges of his work, the physical exertion seems to help the mental machinations.
Overall, ART IN THE BLOOD is a good pastiche. The relationship between Holmes and Watson is true to the Canon. The language, the settings, the social mores portrayed are all well done. There is a sub-plot that gives me pause. This is the second pastiche I've read recently, and both have had to do (at least in part) with what we consider child abuse. I am not entirely sure that it would have been so considered in the late 1800s; child labor was so common as to be almost unnoticed. Very young girls sold their favors on London streets to help support their families. One might assume that there were boys doing the same thing. Boarding schools were rife with hazing, which included taking sexual advantage of the younger boys. As a reader of historical fiction, the insertion of 21st century social attitudes in a story set in the 19th century is always jarring to me. This is the only false note in ART IN THE BLOOD; some readers won't object, some will.
§ P.J. Coldren lives in northern lower Michigan where she reads and reviews widely across the mystery genre when she isn't working in her local hospital pharmacy.
Reviewed by P.J. Coldren, July 2015
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