Anthony Horowitz - "The House of Silk"

When I reviewed Horowitz' Moriarty last year, I indicated at the time that it was worthwhile to revisit his earlier foray into the Sherlock Holmes universe, 2011's The House of Silk. Re-reading this, particularly in light of the more recent novel, is an interesting experience.

House of Silk is much more in the traditional Sherlock Holmes mode. Watson narrates the plot, constantly marvelling at his friend's intelligence and inserting his own purple prose at times, and Holmes moves effortlessly from high society to the Baker Street Irregulars and back, while chasing fiendish wrongdoing on the part of his client. Lestrade appears, as he always should, and manages to avoid stepping on too many toes.
The plot here is very much in the spirit of Conan Doyle, too. Holmes and Watson are approached by art dealer Edmund Carstairs, who has been disturbed by the appearance of a mysterious - and silent - figure outside his house and his art gallery. Carstairs suspects that this man is part of an American gang hell-bent on getting revenge for acts in the United States, hence his appointment with the denizens of 221B Baker Street. The appearance of the mysterious figure leads to robbery and - shortly thereafter - to murder. The game, as Holmes would doubtless say, is afoot.
Soon, though, things take a very different turn. As both Holmes and Watson remark, this is not the way in which the great detective's cases typically develop (although it is, of course, redolent of more contemporary crime fiction). The disappearance of one of the Irregulars prompts the two men to investigate further, and to uncover mentions of a mysterious organisation known as "The House of Silk". When further murders are uncovered, the situation clearly becomes more dangerous, and both Holmes and Watson are themselves put at risk.
The eventual resolution wraps up both mysteries quite neatly. While the plot includes considerably more action than Conan Doyle traditionally worked into his plots, Holmes' explanations of what had actually happened is a return to the vintage style again, although it does end on a more contemporary note of ambiguity.

But does it work?

I'm not convinced that it does. The problem with revisiting any beloved literary creation (Horowitz has also written some James Bond novels, for example) is that fans of the original will note any deviations from that original. As a confirmed Holmesian myself, there were more than a few moments which didn't quite ring true.
Most of these, interestingly, were Watson himself. He reports dialogue with more than a few anachronisms, and at least one Americanism on Holmes' part. Small points, of course, but they are nonetheless jarring. Horowitz himself is also guilty of some bizarre lapses of continuity - a victim is stabbed, until he's been "shot", and a character is both "Fitzsimmons" and "Fitzwilliams". While neither of these gets in the way of the plot, they're the sort of thing a well-known novelist ought to be able to avoid.
Holmes occasionally, too, becomes a sort of "Holmes-by-numbers". The pipe is there, the violin is there, the seven-percent-solution is there, and Horowitz appears to believe that simply winding him up and pointing him in the general direction of the plot is worthwhile. It doesn't quite work that well.

My other problem, to be frank, is the subject matter. Watson spends rather too much time moralising about Victorian London, which he never does in the originals, and the second (and dominant) part of the plot is an attempt to bring Holmes into a more modern context. I don't want to give that part of the novel away, but the subject matter may be a bit confronting for some.

As another strange note, House of Silk provides yet another "origin story" for Holmes' arch-nemesis Moriarty - and one at odds with the events in the novel of the same name. Hardened Holmesians will know that the "Napoleon of Crime" has whatever origin Conan Doyle wanted him to have for the purposes of the story, but this is quite jarring as well.

While House of Silk has its moments, and there are several of these (a dialogue with Mycroft in which both brothers "out-deduce" each other is remarkable, but unexplained), the effect is less than it should be.

Three stars.