In James Lovegrove’s crime novel “The Gods of War,” Sherlock Holmes has now reached his sixtieth year. It’s no wonder, then, that his joints creak and crack. Fat-ass Dr. Watson, truth be told, can’t keep up with the pace as he used to. Luckily for them, they don’t really need to in this novel. The excellent detective, for instance, doesn’t even bother to use his unique method to casually deduce how his long-lost colleague traveled on the train, the biggest cliché in every Holmes story, since he is, as he puts it, “too excited about his new case”… Which turns out to be a pitiful burglary.
It seems cheap, doesn’t it? Yet, how much would it have cost Lovegrove to figure out that the person sitting across from Watson was an aging, one-legged Devonshire horse trader, intending to buy feed for his prize-winning colt, Bucephalus… while on the right side of the doctor, an old lady wearing a pheasant-feathered hat was traveling to visit her sister, while she was reading the fourth edition of “The Secret of the Cloister.”
Nothing at all.
The situation improves a bit when they stumble upon a new case, but not by much. After numerous mishaps and awkward encounters, the two characters, resembling a parody of themselves, uncover a mystery that would feel embarrassing even in a young adult fantasy. Not to mention that the great revelation lacks any excitement or unexpected twist. The two old bones wander aimlessly through about two-thirds of the plot, then Holmes unexpectedly leaves, returns, and announces that he has solved everything. And you just stare, realizing he even found out a bunch of other unnecessary things.
James Lovegrove’s writing style in this book more or less resembles Conan Doyle’s not-so-fresh prose, excluding a few awkward, anachronistic expressions. However, some supporting characters simply don’t fit into the early 20th century., like the overly emancipated costume shop girl who invests all her savings in a small-town costume store. (Pre-market research rules!) Or the childishly malicious and scheming police officer.
But these mean nothing compared to an unparalleled feat of authorship that I have never encountered in my decades-long reading career! Ladies and gentlemen, behold the man, James Lovegrove, who writes in SLOW MOTION:
Listen up!: “Despite being ten years older, a love affair blossomed between us. But after a few months, his behavior changed, so I broke up with him.” This takes ten pages in the book.
What would be a sentence in a normal case takes at least half a page in this book. Everything is explained to the extreme. If the characters reach a house, you can be sure that a one-page description of the building’s history, plus the impressions of “The Gods of War” characters about it, is coming.
If Aleister Crowley, the eccentric magician, happens to be mentioned, you can read an additional two exhaustive pages about this peculiar figure’s work. If someone asks a character about the time, they will tell the time AND ALSO narrate who they inherited their watch from, where they got the leather strap, and that three weeks ago, they once forgot to wind it, making them late for Aunt Maggie’s tea party.
Sounds boring?
BECAUSE IT FRAKKIN’ WELL IS!
4.5/10
Gods of War (The New Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Titan Books #5) by James Lovegrove
296 pages, Paperback
Published in 2014 by Titan Books