Five Miles Of Country

Gretchen Altabef’s Sherlock Holmes: Five Miles of Country is likely to draw those who like innovation. 5-STARS!

The year is 1896. Sherlock Holmes meets Thomas Edison. At the dawn of Cinema, a beautiful and talented Broadway danseuse is murdered in Edison’s New Jersey Laboratory. Irene Adler encounters ghosts on Broadway. Harry Houdini mystifies the New York Vaudeville circuit. Holmes and Watson go hunting in New York City’s Badlands with Police Commissioner, Theodore Roosevelt. Meanwhile, Rachel Holmes journeys to the Pine Barrens to film the Jersey Devil and the denizens of Poughkeepsie reel in Kipsy the Hudson River Monster.

FIVE STAR REVIEWED BY Vincent F. A. Golphin

Sherlock Holmes fans will find themselves transported beyond the frequent mimic of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s Victorian writing. Gretchen Altabef’s Sherlock Holmes: Five Miles of Country is likely to draw those who like innovation. If you are drawn like the quintessential hive dweller to MX Publishing’s output, do not claim a complete knowledge of the depth of that niche genre until you’ve read Gretchen Altabef’s Sherlock Holmes: Five Miles of Country. The tale, largely set in the New York City/New Jersey area differs in characters and dialogue from most previous works. To avoid spoilers, I won’t reveal more specifics about the plot than can be found in the author’s synopsis.

Written in a different voice than most John Watson chronicles, the 1896 romp is a tightly researched plot that pulls the Baker Street detective into the birth of movies in the United States. The nascent art form is new, as is the homicide method. Yet, more impressive is the author’s handling of the real history that surrounds a fictional dancer’s death. Altabef rolls in a cast of familiar celebrities such as the New Jersey-based inventor Thomas Edison, Vaudeville’s Harry Houdini and Theodore Roosevelt, a commissioner who tamed the NYPD, peppered with fictional women.

The novel introduces a different role for Holmes’ heartthrob Irene Adler and a previously unknown myth-chaser Rachel Holmes. Adler whom Doyle debuts in “A Scandal in Bohemia” in 1891, is always a sort of white whale for the famous detective. Altabef marries the pair as a means to add notions of Holmes as more of a real man rather than a male that views women as a distraction. Also, the fabled opera singer turns producer and touches on the real racial segregation that existed on Broadway during America’s Gilded Age and ghostly haunts along the Great White Way. Rachel Holmes’ pursuit to film a creature said to inhabit the Pine Barrens of southern New Jersey adds to the book’s step away from male-dominated sagas where women tend to be rescued or rotten.

Five Miles of Country’s mystery is solid, and its murder resolution is clever. Readers who wonder what prompted the author will find the answer in the Acknowledgments in the final chapter. “Writing is the art of creating something from seemingly nothing,” Altabef declares. “The ‘nothing’ is the invisible magic of synergistic synthesis that goes on inside the artist’s mind.” 

Altabef’s fresh take on so many elements that could have been stale is a pleasurable read. Give it a try. You will want more.

Award-Winning author, Gretchen Altabef, publishes with MX Sherlock Holmes Books. These Scattered Houses, in Sherlock Holmes’s voice, chronicles a unique conclusion to his ‘Great Hiatus’. In Remarkable Power of Stimulus, Holmes finds London awash in murders, anarchists threatening Paris, and the return of Irene Adler. Under surveillance by Moriarty’s henchmen, Holmes steps into Baker Street knowing he will find Watson’s friendship and unerring aim are as dependable as the British Rail. FIVE MILES OF COUNTRY is Altabef’s third novel in the Rachel Holmes series. Holmes and Watson are called to Thomas Edison’s ‘Imagination Factory’ to solve the murder of a Vaudeville danseuse in the world’s first motion picture studio. THE KEYS OF DEATH is a genesis story of the young occupants of No. 221B Baker Street and how they solve Mr Hudson’s murder.