The Cat of the Baskervillese: 03/19/19

The Cat of the Baskervilles by Vicki Delany is the third of the Sherlock Holmes Bookshop mysteries. It's set in West London, Massachusetts. That puts it in the middle of the fictional Cape Cod also mapped and populated by Joseph C. Lincoln's novels a hundred years ago.

West London's theater festival is doing a version of the Hound of the Baskervilles. Playing Sherlock Holmes is a well known film star who is at a low point in his career. He and the other actors are there at a summer lunch to do a reading. After flubbing his lines he's later found dead, having apparently slipped and fallen to his death.

But nothing is ever that simple and it's clear from evidence left on the trail that he was probably pushed. Gemma decides it's in her best interest to solve the case since the local police don't seem up to the task.

The set up of this one reminded me of a Columbo or maybe a Midsommer Murders especially with the victim being elderly and the criminal also being elderly — albeit spry. There's nothing wrong with this type of plot but it did put me in a nostalgic mindset as this plot was far more common twenty or thirty or even forty years ago.

The next book is A Scandal in Scarlet (2018).

Four stars

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