- Osborn, Stephanie.
The Case of the Displaced Detective Omnibus.
Kingsport, TN: Twilight Times Books, 2013.
ASIN B00FOR5LJ4.
-
This book, available only for the Kindle, collects the first four novels
of the author's Displaced Detective series. The individual
books included here are
The Arrival,
At Speed,
The Rendlesham Incident, and
Endings and Beginnings.
Each pair of books, in turn, comprises a single story, the first
two The Case of the Displaced Detective and the
latter two The Case of the Cosmological Killer. If you
read only the first of either pair, it will be obvious that the
story has been left in the middle with little resolved. In the trade
paperback edition, the four books total more than 1100 pages, so
this omnibus edition will keep you busy for a while.
Dr. Skye Chadwick is a hyperspatial physicist and chief scientist of
Project Tesseract. Research into the multiverse and brane world
solutions of string theory has revealed that our continuum—all of
the spacetime we inhabit—is just one of an unknown number adjacent
to one another in a higher dimensional membrane (“brane”), and
that while every continuum is different, those close to one another in
the hyperdimensional space tend to be similar. Project Tesseract,
a highly classified military project operating from an underground laboratory
in Colorado, is developing hardware based on advanced particle physics
which allows passively observing or even interacting with these other
continua (or parallel universes).
The researchers are amazed to discover that in some continua characters
which are fictional in our world actually exist, much as they were
described in literature. Perhaps Heinlein and Borges were right in
speculating that fiction exists in parallel universes, and maybe
that's where some of authors' ideas come from. In any case, exploration
of Continuum 114 has revealed it to be one of those in which Sherlock
Holmes is a living, breathing man. Chadwick and her team decide to
investigate one of the pivotal and enigmatic episodes in the Holmes
literature, the fight at Reichenbach Falls. As Holmes and Moriarty
battle, it is apparent that both will fall to their death. Chadwick
acts impulsively and pulls Holmes from the brink of the cliff, back
through the Tesseract, into our continuum. In an instant, Sherlock Holmes,
consulting detective of 1891 London, finds himself in twenty-first
century Colorado, where he previously existed only in the stories of
Arthur Conan Doyle.
Holmes finds much to adapt to in this often bewildering world, but then
he was always a shrewd observer and master of disguise, so few people
would be as well equipped. At the same time, the Tesseract project
faces a crisis, as a disaster and subsequent investigation reveals
the possibility of sabotage and an espionage ring operating within
the project. A trusted, outside investigator with no ties to the
project is needed, and who better than Holmes, who owes his life to it?
With Chadwick at his side, they dig into the mystery surrounding the
project.
As they work together, they find themselves increasingly attracted
to one another, and Holmes must confront his fear that emotional
involvement will impair the logical functioning of his mind upon
which his career is founded. Chadwick, learning to become
a talented investigator in her own right, fears that a deeper than
professional involvement with Holmes will harm her own emerging
talents.
I found that this long story started out just fine, and indeed I recommended
it to several people after finishing the first of the four novels
collected here. To me, it began to run off the rails in the second
book and didn't get any better in the remaining two (which begin with
Holmes and Chadwick an established detective team, summoned to help with
a perplexing mystery in Britain which may have consequences for all
of the myriad contunua in the multiverse). The fundamental problem is
that these books are trying to do too much all at the same time. They
can't decide whether they're science fiction, mystery, detective procedural,
or romance, and as they jump back and forth among the genres, so little
happens in the ones being neglected at the moment that the parallel
story lines develop at a glacial pace. My estimation is that an
editor with a sharp red pencil could cut this material by 50–60%
and end up with a better book, omitting nothing central to the story and
transforming what often seemed a tedious slog into a page-turner.
Sherlock Holmes is truly one of the great timeless characters in literature.
He can be dropped into any epoch, any location, and, in this case, anywhere
in the multiverse, and rapidly start to get to the bottom of the situation
while entertaining the reader looking over his shoulder. There is nothing
wrong with the premise of these books and there are interesting ideas and
characters in them, but the execution just isn't up to the potential of the concept.
The science fiction part sometimes sinks to the techno-babble level of
Star Trek (“Higgs boson injection beginning…”).
I am no prude, but I found the repeated and explicit sex scenes a bit
much (tedious, actually), and they make the books unsuitable for younger
readers for whom the original Sherlock Holmes stories are a pure delight.
If you're interested in the idea, I'd suggest buying just the first book
separately and see how you like it before deciding to proceed, bearing in mind
that I found it the best of the four.
January 2015 