Review by Booklist Review
Meyer returns to his Journals of John H. Watson, M.D., series, which began in the '70s with the bestselling Seven Percent Solution. This time Meyer continues the fictional frame story in which he is asked to turn journal excerpts into a book. Having nothing on his plate during COVID lockdown, Meyer agrees immediately. This hitherto unknown Sherlock Holmes story takes the great consulting detective to Egypt, where his investigation into the disappearance of an English duke who fancies himself an Egyptologist turns into something altogether different and more unsettling. The literary conceit that Watson is the author and Meyer merely the editor once more provides much of the book's charm, with editor Meyer dutifully correcting Watson's factual errors in droll footnotes. Reading a good Holmes and Watson story, whether the real thing or a pastiche, is like reuniting with old friends, and this is certainly a good one. Meyer's writing is impeccable, and his imagination is definitely--to borrow a phrase from a Star Trek movie he cowrote--operating on all thrusters. Top-drawer entertainment for Holmesians.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
In 1910, tuberculosis threatens the life of Dr. Watson's wife, Juliet, in bestseller Meyer's disappointing fifth Sherlock Holmes pastiche (after 2019's The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols). Following medical advice, the Watsons travel to Cairo so that Juliet can be treated at a sanitorium in a drier climate. During a visit to a bar, Watson encounters Holmes, who's in the city investigating the disappearance of the Duke of Uxbridge. The nobleman, an Egyptologist in search of treasure stored in a pharaoh's unopened tomb, hasn't been in contact with his wife for months, and there's no sign of him at the hotel where he normally stays during his annual visits to Cairo. The ensuing inquiry, which the doctor eagerly joins in, soon becomes a murder investigation. The routine plot culminates in an action-packed climax out of an Indiana Jones movie, the mystery element is minimal, and Meyer touches on no larger themes as he's done in the past. Fans of the author's creative reimaginings of Conan Doyle's characters will hope for a return to form next time. Agent: Charlotte Sheedy, Charlotte Sheedy Literary. (Nov.)
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Review by Library Journal Review
In early 1900s Egypt, where he's gone because the climate might ease his wife's tuberculosis, Dr. John Watson encounters his old friend Sherlock Holmes in disguise. Holmes is investigating the disappearance of an English duke--not the first British aristocrat with a passion for Egyptology to vanish with the sand-gritty wind--and they join forces with celebrated archaeologist Howard Carter to discover what is happening. From the author of the enduring The Seven Per Cent Solution; with a 50,000-copy first printing.
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Sherlock Holmes goes to Egypt. Or, more accurately, Dr. Watson goes to Egypt in 1911 in hopes that the desert air will chase away his wife Juliet's tuberculosis, and the Col. Arbuthnot he bumps into turns out to be Holmes in disguise. The Great Detective's client is Brazilian-born Lizabetta del Maurepas, Duchess of Uxbridge, whose husband, impoverished Duke Michael Uxbridge, an Egyptologist, has vanished after purloining a map purporting to show the location of a never-opened pharaonic tomb from Ohlsson, a Swede who's been murdered. The duke is supposed to be staying in Suite 718 of Shepheard's Hotel, but there is no such suite--the first of many mysteries Holmes is called upon to solve in the company of his old friend, who promptly leaves his wife in her sanitarium and follows his leader. Instead of finding the duke, the pair find a trail of corpses (three Egyptologists and a waiter, with more to come) of much more recent vintage than Tuthmose V, the pharaoh who so bedazzled the duke. Holmes learns that his quarry has been traveling in the company of Fatima Gassim, an exotic dancer who's almost certainly a spy. A titanic battle between the fearsome khamsin and the Star of Egypt will leave more people dead. Holmes and Watson will narrowly avoid being entombed alive. In fact, Meyer keeps the pot boiling so furiously that the climactic revelation of the murderer will catch some readers sheepishly admitting that they'd forgotten there was a mystery to be solved. A rousing adventure that has little in common with the Holmes canon except for some proper names. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
