With illustrations by the incomparable Frank Cho (Liberty Meadows, Harley Quinn), I really thought that this was a graphic novel. Without doing any further research, I promptly ordered this through Amazon with trade credit and awaited to spend the holidays with the master detective. Imagine my disappointment when this package arrived and inside was a novel! Only a few pages were graphic and most of those pages were of small trifling items like a bottle of booze and as gas light.
I thought about it long and hard. Do I return this? It's clearly not what I wanted. But I do love me some Sherlock Holmes. And a little bit of Frank Cho artwork is better than no Frank Cho at all. Plus the book is only 225 pages and it's set during Christmas. Thus I decided I will read me another prose novel this year!
Sherlock Holmes and trusty Watson are tasked with solving 2 mysteries; both involving sons. A nobleman asks the sleuth to locate his son who has gone missing in time for Christmas dinner. Then when a young child is nearly kidnapped in broad daylight in the streets of London, Sherlock takes it upon himself to find the would-be abductor and to determine why.
I can't really go too much into the specifics of these cases; least I spoil the book. This book debuted just a few months ago and it's just too new to ruin it for you. Needless to say, I actually figured out both mysteries in this book ahead of time and that's rare for me when it comes to Sherlock Holmes. True, those original mysteries were written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. But to say I figured things out was also in no way a slight towards Bonnie Macbird.
Macbird's version of Holmes is just as inviting as the original. The only difference is that while Macbird's Dr. Watson, the story's narrator, is just as loquacious and poetic in his descriptions, this book isn't filled with Victorian era vocabulary and old-dated Londoner terms that would require me pulling out the dictionary to decipher. Though the author may not have intended it, I very much can envision Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman as the main characters of this story as I read it.
I enjoyed this book very much- despite not being a graphic novel. I enjoyed it so much that after the holidays, I'm going to order the first book in the Bonnie Macbird series. I'm looking forward to a return to Victorian London and with Mrs. Macbird as my guide, I'm rather confident that I shall not get lost.
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 9 out of 10 stars.
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