The Monster of the Mere

Starred review from March 13, 2023
Purser-Hallard burnishes his reputation as one of the finer Conan Doyle imitators in his superb fourth Holmes outing (after 2022’s Masters of Lies), a clever riff on The Hound of the Baskervilles that sees Holmes and Watson probing rumors of a water monster in England’s Lake District. A walking tour takes Watson to the town of Wermeholt, on the shores of Lake Wermewater, the supposed home of a snakelike creature known as the Hagworm. Locals believe that when the centuries-old Hagworm appears, it heralds the death of a member of the Wermeston family, who own much of the lake’s eastern shore. Soon, Watson encounters a scientific expedition pursuing a different explanation: that the monster is a surviving prehistoric reptile. After someone is found dead from apparent animal wounds, Watson summons Holmes to Wermeholt and the pair set about determining what’s really haunting the lake. Purser-Hallard captures Conan Doyle’s style and characters perfectly, forging a plot with all the pace and atmosphere of a classic horror film. Sherlockians looking for authenticity in their pastiche will hope this author delivers many more.

April 1, 2023
Sherlock Holmes and Dr. John Watson wander into a case that might better have suited Professor Challenger of The Lost World. A walking tour of the Lake District in 1899 brings Watson to the nothingburger village of Wermeholt, where his old teacher, noted anatomist Prof. Summerlee, has joined forces with paleontologist Prof. James Creavesey on a mission too hush-hush to reveal to an outsider. The plot thickens when Creavesey's student Henry Gramascene goes missing and curdles when Gramascene's found mauled and bashed to death, having evidently been attacked while rowing across the Wermewater and dragged himself to collapse in the local cemetery. In the wake of this gruesome discovery, Summerlee and Creavesey acknowledge that they're investigating signs of the Hagworm, a dinosaur rumored to have somehow survived into the Anthropocene Era. Watson naturally writes to Holmes, though this particular mystery doesn't exactly seem to be up his alley. Holmes' investigation throws new light on the connection between Gramascene's death and legends that the foreign-born wife of Lord William de Wermeston, an ancestor of local aristocrat Lady Ophelia Wermeston, who's sponsoring Summerlee and Creavesey's research, turned into a "loathsome worm" and devoured her distinguished husband. But all of Holmes' insistence that there must be a rational explanation for all these incidents cannot prevent two more violent deaths before he and Watson confront the Hagworm in all its ghoulish glory. Sherlock Holmes in Jurassic Park. If you think that sounds too outlandish to work, you may be on to something.

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