Always at a loss for a suitable Christmas present for his friend, Dr Watson gives him a subscription to the Baker Street Chamber Music Society, little suspecting that the first recital they attend will be marred by the gruesome murder of Guido Salvato the celebrated ‘gloved pianist’. The four suspects include a professional rival, a West End star and a jilted lover, but Holmes needs all his skill and specialist knowledge to discover the culprit.
The year is 1906, Queen Victoria has been dead these last five years and in the streets of London the hansom cab is giving way to the motor car. In the USA the Wright brothers have taken to the air and everywhere machinery is replacing craftsmanship. The time and place is still the world of Holmes and Watson as the aging pair eagerly advance into the beginning of the 20th century and are thrust into the investigation of a murder that would have been impossible only a few years earlier. The story of The Gloved Pianist is somewhat different from the usual Holmes pastiche. It is couched in the form of a typical "whodunit" - something that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle himself never offered his readers. Thus not only the shade of Doyle but also the spirit of Dame Agatha Christie hovers over the book.
"As in his previous volumes, Alan Stockwell gets close to the authentic Watsonian narrative style, and the reader is transported convincingly back into the ambience of the (here) Edwardian era. The story introduces a very ingenious basic idea, whereby the latest technology of the age conspires to produce a crime unique in the annals of malefaction. The tale is strongly plotted, and all the loose ends of the suitably tangled skein are neatly teased out and tied together at the end, with a satisfying profusion of false trails along the way. The whole is seasoned with some sly touches of humour — not to mention the odd pawky pun.
To paraphrase a closing remark by Holmes, the demonstration of method in the one case, and the murder in the other, were both effected by means which “would have been impossible just a few years ago”. If this intriguing fact does not make you yearn to read the book, then it jolly well should!"
The Sherlock Holmes Society of London Journal Winter 2010
SHERLOCK HOLMES
and the Singular Adventure of the
GLOVED PIANIST
ISBN 978-0-9565013-1-8
Paperback 140 pages
USA $6.95 UK £4.95 EUROPE €5.95
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