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Although Sherlock Holmes categorically dismissed, in "The Adventure of the Sussex Vampire," supernatural explanations for corporeal crimes ("This Agency stands flat-footed upon the ground, and there it must remain. ... No ghosts need apply"), one of the most popular among Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Holmes tales is The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), in which the fate of a Devonshire family supposedly hangs on the savage appetites of an apparitional beast. More than a century later, in The Italian Secretary, Caleb Carr again presents the hawk-faced consulting detective with a yarn woven of paranormal plot threads, the mystery this time rooted in the fatal 16th-century stabbing of David Rizzio, a music teacher and confidant to Mary, Queen of Scots. For Holmes and his affable annalist, Dr. John Watson, this spirited escapade begins sometime in the late 19th century with their receipt, in London, of an encrypted telegram from Sherlock's eccentric elder brother, Mycroft, "a senior but anonymous government official." It summons them to Edinburgh, Scotland, where architect Sir Alistair Sinclair and his foreman, Dennis McKay, have been slain in the midst of rehabilitating the medieval west tower of the Royal Palace of Holyrood--the very wing where Queen Mary had lived, and where Rizzio had met his brutal, politically motivated end. Mycroft fears these murders portend new threats against Britain's present monarch--the elderly Queen Victoria, who infrequently lodges at the palace--by a known assassin, perhaps in nefarious league with the German Kaiser. En route north, Holmes and Watson are menaced aboard their train by a red-bearded bomb thrower (supposedly a rabid Scots nationalist), only to discover that still greater dangers await them, and others, at Holyroodhouse. The plaintive drone of a weeping woman, cruelly punctured and shattered corpses, a pool of blood "that never dries," and a disembodied Italian voice with unexpected musical tastes all imply the wrath of wraiths behind recent atrocities. But Holmes and Watson deduce that greed, rather than ghosts, may be to blame. Carr, who earned renown with his historical mysteries, The Alienist (1994) and The Angel of Darkness (1997), apparently intended The Italian Secretary to be a short story; however, he couldn't stop writing. The result is a fleet-footed, atmospherically gothic, and often amusing Holmes tale (with an exposition scene in Watson's bed chamber that’s truly priceless), but one that makes scant attempt to enhance our understanding of Conan Doyle's characters--a less ambitious undertaking, in that respect, than Mitch Cullin's concurrently published A Slight Trick of the Mind. And while Carr displays a gift here for adopting another author's literary techniques, it is really his own style and series players that his fans are waiting to see more of in the future. --J. Kingston Pierce
 
 Customer Reviews 
Much Ado About Nothing - Sherlock Holmes On Qualudes
Rating: 
Having been a fan of Carr since his voracious 19th century thriller The Alienist, I was expecting alot more out of The Italian Secretary than I got. Carr had been chosen by the Arthur Conan Doyle Estate to continue on with the Sherlock Holmes mythos and this seemed like a marriage made in heaven. What The Italian Secretary reads like is not homage but tired copycat prose. It feels like Carr just picked up a copy of The Complete Sherlock Holmes, read it, and wrote The Italian Secretary. Not once did it grab me like any of Conan Doyle's Holmes mysteries. Not once. This is an exercise in cliches, and that's about it. Where The Alienist and The Angel Of Darkness were complete and tight, The Italian Secretary seems to have been hurriedly slapped together. There is no real mystery here. The entire situation is solved well before the end of the book. Maybe the Conan Doyle Estate should have picked Mark Frost (The List Of 7, The 6 Messiahs) to do Holmes, for his books were far more entertaining.
Not Quite So Elementary...
Rating: 
It can be a daunting task to write a new adventure for one of the literary world's most beloved detectives of all time. The author is certain to open himself up to criticism and to be told that he is no Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But the undertakers of this project knew that much to begin with, and since this work (and the others, all originally intended as short stories) was commissioned by the Conan Doyle Estate, the criticism of the novel should not be based upon the author not 'living up' to the standards of Conan Doyle. That was not the point - the point was to create a new adventure for a literary hero in the same vein, and Caleb Carr, who is a masterful storyteller of historical mysteries, has done a commendable job.
"The Italian Secretary" is a mystery set within Holyroodhouse, the legendary palace of Mary, Queen of Scots, situated in Edinburgh, Scotland. The title comes from a story that had circulated through the ages, of an Italain secretary who influenced the queen and was violently killed within her private chambers in an effort to send a message to the Catholic ruler within a Protestant nation. Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson find themselves drawn into this other-worldly mystery at Holyroodhouse through Holmes' brother, Mycroft, an agent and protector of Queen Victoria, with whom he shares a close and confidential relationship. When two young Scotsmen are found murdered within the castle grounds, rumors fast fly that it is the spirit of the Italian secretary seeking revenge for his hundred-years-old murder. Yet Watson and Holmes know that a supernatural explanation cannot be behind the truth, and set out to uncover the real murderous happenings in the royal palace, an adventure that finds them risking their own lives, and questioning their belief in the supernatural.
While some criticisms of this book may naturally be founded in the fact that Conan Doyle did not like using the supernatural in detective stories; but perhaps the most popular of the Holmes' stories, "The Hound of the Baskervilles", involves the supernatural to a great length (and a debunking of that in the end). This same concept is applied to "The Italian Secretary" with aplomb and ease. Caleb Carr naturally captures the relationship and repartee between Watson and Holmes; the pacing and subtle twists of the mystery are in keeping with Conan Doyle's style, as are the revelations of clues that only Sherlock Holmes can perceive. Caleb Carr has certainly ascertained his place in the literary world with "The Alienist" series and further adds to his merit with "The Italian Secretary". Since it seems to be the mode in today's literature to take famous literary characters and create new stories for them, sometimes with disastrous effect, it is a joy to read an imagining from an author who is worthy of breathing new life into such a beloved character.
Boredom Abounds
Rating:
I've never read a Sherlock Holmes novel so if the excercise of this book was to get as close to the original as possible yet provide a new adventure for the old slueth and his fans, then I have no idea if the author accomplished his mission. But if I were reading this for pure entertainment, as I was, then I'd have to say that this book was a real yawner. The best thing to say about it was that it was relatively short. I just don't see Sherlock having any relevance in todays world. His deductive reasoning, his thinking process and jumps of reasoning are talked out with his sidekick Watson, and seem like self-fulfilled prophesies. He deduces it so it must be true. I'd like to see him be so wrong that the result is somebody close to him bites the bullet.
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