The Star of India

Bugge, Carole. (1998). The Star of India: A Novel of Sherlock Holmes. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press.  

ISBN: 978-0312180348

Pages: 256

Genre: mystery

Annotation: A case to locate a missing jewel becomes much more.  

Summary: Holmes and Watson’s peace is disrupted when they are approached to recover a stolen jewel. If the Star India is not found the already rocky relationship with India will suffer. Holmes learns the jewel was stolen by none other than Professor Moriarty. As Holmes plays a demented game of chess with Moriarty in the streets of London he learns the jewel is only one part of the professor’s plan to pit England and India against each other. Holmes must overcome the plans of his most evil and intelligent foe.

Evaluation: good read

Bugge’s portrayal of Holmes and others is excellent. Holmes feels determination for justice, and compassion, but is uncomfortable with those feelings. This dynamic makes Holmes seem all the more brilliant because he is shown to be human. Watson is shown to be not as intelligent as Holmes, but with a determination to do the right thing which makes him a perfect best friend for the detective. The other characters of Lestrade, Moriarty, etc. are engaging and well done.  One complaint is that the role of one of the characters is too obvious. Otherwise the story is a good one: a brisk paced outing which evokes the feeling of a Doyle tale. A good read for fans of Holmes and Watson’s England.

What else to read or watch:

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes books:

Carole Bugge’s  The Haunting of Torre Abbey: A Novel of Sherlock Holmes and her tale in The Confidential Casebook of Sherlock Holmes edited by Marvin Kaye and Kathleen Brady.

Larry Millett's Sherlock Holmes books take place in the U.S., but his portrayal of Holmes is also a mixture of human and detective.

Basil Rathbone’s portrayal of Holmes in the radio plays and movies is excellent. He is brilliant a, but also quirky: sometimes irritable and sometimes saying things he later has to apologize to Watson for. Radio plays starring him as Holmes can be found at http://archive.org/details/HQSherlockRathboneTCS . Several of the films also can be found on archive.org. Thank goodness for that site and for public domain!

If you like these, or just want to see some other Holmes related books, there are several which I like for their characters, plots and (if applicable) humor:

Carole Nelson Douglas brings a strong heroine to Sherlock Holmes in the Irene Adler series.

Quinn Fawcett’s Mycroft Holmes series focuses on a secretary who works for Mycroft Holmes (Sherlock’s brother).

Michael Kurland’s Professor Moriarty series focuses on a couple who works for Moriarty with appearances by the Professor. Kurland’s Moriarty is not so much evil as diabolical.

Coming soon to this blog someday…

A book that might be an interesting tale about the Holmes tales is Graham Moore’s The Sherlockian. At some point, I will get through my to be read pile and provide some thoughts on this. I would be interested if anyone else has read this book yet and has any thoughts they’d like to share.