The Brothers of Baker
Street by Michael
Robertson (2011).
A second adventure of Reggie and Nigel Heath.
A very unique take on Sherlock Holmes on 21st
century.
For one thing, none of the brothers (Reggie and
Nigel) are detectives and they are not that good at solving mysteries ‘cause
they are lawyers!!
Yet, they are forced to face the cases that
require Sherlock like intuition.
Only because they happen to rent “221B Baker St.” for their law office
by mistake.
Somebody should make a TV series for this. Really.
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layers. – There are four important
characters in this book. The rest are just extras.
Reggie Heath. Older
and more serious Heath. A barrister (lawyer) who was the sharpest and the best
in the league but after a few crazy incident ( “The Baker Street Letters”, the
brother’s first adventure), decided to quite the criminal justice and now kind
of looking for the new clienteles which don’t involves criminals.
With his first case as
a “Sherlock Holmes” (yes, he and his brother are forced to act as the legend
when they sign the lease agreement with 221B Baker St. For more detail,
just check out page 12 under “Additional Duties of the Lessee”. It’s hilarious),
he lost almost everything: his decent amount of fortune, a beautiful girl
friend and with that, a bit of confidence too.
He is the one who
always takes care of his younger brother.
Nigel Heath. A more relaxed, casual and adventurous Heath.
After the last case,
he got his lawyer license suspended and now lives in LA doing…something.
He married a woman
named Mara whom he met during the first case.
Quite a good listener
and good investigator.
Although no where near
Sherlock Holmes, Nigel and Reggie, together with the help of Laura, make
one perfect (and lovable?) Sherlock Holmes. What a brilliant concept!!
Laura. A gorgeous stage actress who is about to become a new superstar.
She is one of those classic “Beauty with Brain”: smart, careful, considerate and thoughtful.
She is stuck between Reggie and Billionaire Buxton
for love triangle and that makes a great subplot for this book. It is so juicy,
it takes over entire storyline for a couple of chapters in the middle section
of the book.
Moriarty. Yes, there is Moriarty
in this book. But, because we have quite different Sherlock Holmes in here,
inevitably Moriarty follows the same trend.
Moriarty in this book is significantly scaled down on its evilness and
not a genius criminal master mind that he is sooo famously known for.
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lace. –Present day London, England. More precisely, 221B
BAKER STREET, probably the most
famous fictional address ever created by human being.
Even
today, people from all around the world send letter to this address for the
famous sleuth’s advice. Kind of like North Pole for the troubled soul.
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lot. – A black cab driver
is accused of killing a couple of innocent tourists and his solicitor somehow
convinces our hero Reggie to take the case. As soon as he starts working on the
case, a typed letter arrives on his office with the name Moriarty on the bottom.
From there, the second
case of the Brothers of Baker Street which involves a black cab and the most
famous villain in the history of mystery keeps rolling and rolling until it
reaches three different but entwined climaxes for each of the main characters:
Reggie, Nigel and Laura. (Yes, each one has his/her own exciting endings.)
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erdict. –Splitting Sherlock Holmes into
two totally different characters (brothers) is such a simple and brilliant
idea, Michael Robertson should get some kind of award from Conan Doyle Foundation
(if indeed such thing actually exists.).
Even if the feel of
the book is quite different from the original: light-hearted, delightful and
funny, as opposes to the original’s mysterious, scary and sometime dangerous
atmosphere, this book still has enough kick and twist to hold its own against
the original masterpiece.
Now, I’m waiting for the TV series.
This could be more like hugely entertaining Elementary than much more
serious BBC masterpiece Sherlock.
