Sherlock Holmes and The Baron of Brede Place

Sherlock Holmes and the American Literati #2

by Daniel D. Victor

They called her “Lady Stewart” when she was married to a British aristocrat. They called her “Miss Cora “when she ran a brothel in Florida. But she called herself “Mrs. Crane” when she asked Sherlock Holmes to locate her common-law husband, writer Stephen Crane, who’d gone missing in Cuba during the Spanish-American War. In their attempt to fulfil the lady’s request, Holmes and Watson encounter a world of celebrity authors, terrorist bombings, and haunted manor houses. But it is only when Stephen Crane falls victim to a notorious blackmailer that the master detective and his partner find themselves face-to-face with cold-blooded murder. Under darkened skies, a solitary apparition stood brightly illuminated on the ship’s gloomy deck. Or so it seemed. Cloaked in a long white raincoat-the same gleaming duster he’d worn in the face of Spanish gunfire at San Juan Heights-Stephen Crane looked for all the world like the ghost so many people thought he’d already become.

Genres: Mystery, Fiction

228 pages, Kindle Edition

First published July 20, 2015

About the author

Daniel D. Victor is a retired high school teacher who lives with his wife and two sons in his native Los Angeles, California. A graduate of Fairfax High School, he earned his BA at UC Berkeley, his MA at California State University, Los Angeles, and his Ph.D. in American Literature at the Claremont Graduate School in Claremont, CA. His doctoral dissertation, THE MUCKRAKER AND THE DANDY: THE CONFLICTING PERSONAE OF DAVID GRAHAM PHILLIPS, led to the creation of the Sherlock Holmes pastiche THE SEVENTH BULLET. Originally published as a Thomas Dunne Book by St. Martin's Press in 1992, it was reprinted in paperback by Titan Books, UK, in 2010 as part of its series, "The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes," and translated into Russian in 2012. The novel's first two chapters also appeared in Cold Mountain Review, Appalachian State University. In addition to his writing, Victor has won numerous teaching awards including an independent study grant offered by the National Endowment for the Humanities as well as admission to two NEH summer seminars, one at UC Berkeley, the other at Oxford University in Oxford, England. Victor's second novel, A STUDY IN SYNCHRONICITY, is a murder mystery with a two-stranded plot, one of which features a Sherlock Holmes-like private detective. Victor's second Holmes novel, THE FINAL PAGE OF BAKER STREET, in which Holmes finds the young Raymond Chandler working for him as a pageboy, was published in 2014. It is the first volume of his series, "Sherlock Holmes and the American Literati," produced by MX Publishing. The second, THE BARON OF BREDE PLACE (2015), introduces Holmes to novelist Stephen Crane; the third, SEVENTEEN MINUTES TO BAKER STREET (2016), presents Mark Twain; and the fourth, THE OUTRAGE AT THE DIOGENES CLUB (2016), involves Jack London. Victor has also contributed short stories about Holme to the anthologies, THE MX BOOK OF NEW SHERLOCK HOLMES STORIES, BEYOND WATSON, and HOLMES AWAY FROM HOME.

Reviews

[Dale · Rating 5 out of 5]

Blackmail on both sides of the pond…

My thanks go out to Steve and Timi at MX Publishing for my copy of this book. May Undershaw stand forever!

This is volume two in this series paring Holmes with various American authors.

This novel is the retelling of “The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton,” Doyle’s twisted blackmailer. The story is expanded and with a slightly diffident ending. Yet in the end, we are just as unsure as to who killed Milverton as we were in the original short story!

Holmes is alerted that American author Stephen Crane has become a victim of the constantly smirking Milverton. Since Holmes is acting for Lady Eva, he already is bracing to meet Milverton to talk terms. Not only is Milverton totally unwilling to show mercy, he demonstrates that he will go to any lengths to “get my money!” as he puts it.

The character of the twisted blackmailer, already known to be dark and pitiless, is shown to be even more of a devil than any reader already knows! The book is packed with action and drama! The characters are well developed and the pacing is superb!

I found it a bit ironic that I enjoyed this novel so well. I never liked anything Stephen Crane wrote and resented having to read him in school. In this book, Crane is an excellent character! Physically sick and somewhat morally challenged, one can sympathize with Crane as Milverton presses the issue. Daniel Victor, kudos for making a hated American author into a character worth reading!

I give the book five stars!

Quoth the Raven…

[Tony Ciak · Rating 5 out of 5]

An interesting meeting with the wife of an American author and a blackmailer, really enjoyed it.

[Barry Smolin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Daniel D. Victor has done it again. Just as he pulled off in the first book of his Sherlock Holmes and the American Literati series--"The Final Page of Baker Street", in which Sherlock Holmes intersects with hard-boiled author Raymond Chandler--Victor has matched Britain's greatest sleuth with another American author, this time novelist and poet Stephen Crane, to broaden his ownership of the niche he's inhabited so successfully. In "Sherlock Holmes and the Baron of Brede Place," once more it is Victor's ability to weave the British syntax, vocabulary, and cadences of Dr. Watson's narrative voice with the earthier, grittier American English of Stephen Crane (and his wife) that makes this mystery such a pleasure to follow. A cavalcade of betrayals and deceptions ignite this narration, all the while, as is Victor's strong suit, pepperings of salty American talk, baseball imagery, and the sleazy doings of the American (and British) demi-monde adding texture and richness to this dazzling tapestry. The depictions of the Holmes and Watson of Conan Doyle's canon are spot-on accurate, and, admirably, young Stephen Crane talks the way he writes, terse, vivid, and grounded in the lexicon of his homeland. For all of the intensity of the plot's central mystery and the pitch-perfect pastiche of the Sherlockian cosmos, the real star of Victor's tale is Cora, i.e. Mrs. Stephen Crane, a complex, riveting figure, around whose ambitions and neuroses most of the proceedings revolve. In "Sherlock Holmes and the Baron of Brede Place," Daniel Victor ratchets up his mastery big time. The next book in the series promises to be colossal.

[Eddie · Rating 5 out of 5]

A totally enjoyable read. Looking forward to the other Holmes's books. I really felt that I was a fly on the wall in Sherlock's time and place.