The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes by Leonard Goldberg

Griffin, 320 pages, $16.99 (c2018)

Most if not all the Holmes pastiches reference the standard operating characters and past cases. There’s probably an obscure reference or two or three that only the cognoscente will recognize. “The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes” isn't written for that "in crowd" as much as to be read and enjoyed by people with just basic knowledge of the "canon." 

Dr. James Watson is in attendance. He is still in mourning over the death of his friend, the famous beekeeper, Sherlock Holmes. In his old age, he is living in his old rooms at 221B Baker Street. His son, James, Jr., is also a doctor and, moreover, is conveniently a pathologist. Watson still is served by the housekeeper Hudson, but it is a younger version of the redoubtable Mrs. Hudson in the person of her daughter, Miss Hudson. The other daughter, the daughter of the title, is Mrs. Joanna Blalock, the daughter of Sherlock and Irene Adler, “the woman.” She was adopted as a baby by the Blalocks and has never been told her origin story. Joanna was a wife and nurse, but has since been widowed and left her job as a nurse at the hospital to take care of her son. The villain of the piece, too, has a connection to the cases of Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. Lestrade is still, for better or worse, Lestrade.

The players are in place. Because the tale is told through the narrative of James, Jr., it is an unraveling of the tale told by someone who only grasps the pertinent parts through revelations spoken by Joanna. Not that James is as hapless as his father was as Sherlock’s chronicler. 

The occasion for the meeting of the sleuthing minds is the death of a young man who has dropped from a building to the ground and died. Joanna was walking with her son past the building when her son witnessed the falling man. Watson and Junior are brought into the case by the family of the deceased. At first, only Watson knows Joanna’s true identity. He has been left as her secret trustee by Sherlock’s estate. Watson’s age and increasing infirmities lead him to reveal the secret to his son, who must in the future assume the trustee’s responsibilities.

It is Joanna who convinces everyone that the fallen man had been murdered. After that, she involves herself in the case at each step. Her impeccable conclusions convince Lestrade of her worth. Let us pass by any thought of how unlikely that might be. As a matter of fact, let us just accept the suppositions inherent in this storyline. Let us just mosey along with author Leonard Goldberg and enjoy a plot that indeed sounds as though it could have been crafted by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, even if the mushy parts and dialogue would not pass muster.

This is the first of five books issued so far in the series.