Friday, July 29, 2016

The Black Dove by Steve Hockensmith

This is the third book in the Holmes on the Range series. I've written about the first one here and the second one here.

So far I have been utterly in love with these books. This one though, I didn't love quite as much. Don't get me wrong: its great. I am more than happy that I've read it, and I will continue on with the series. My mixed feelings haven't swayed me that far. It's just... this book left me wanting.

The Black Dove is set in Chinatown and it involves a lot of the same characters from the previous novel. The Amlingmeyer brothers are still on the hunt for a job with some private detectives when they come across an old friend who ends up dead and they need to solve the murder.

This book runs over the course of about a day and a half. There's a whole new cast of characters (and a couple of old ones) that find the brothers heading into trouble without a whole lot of planning or direction. Old Red sniffs out clues and gets to detecting in the way of Sherlock Holmes as he's done since book one, and Big Red stands by to render aide whenever necessary.

It was fun and exciting like the other ones, but it wasn't the same. I think it was possibly because the situations they found themselves in were so crazy and slapped together that it lost plausibility for me. The ending was quite unexpected though, and that redeemed it a bit for me.

Recommendation: Overall, not a bad book, but if you were interested in this series, then I would recommend that you don't start with this one. Read the first two before this one for sure. Then you will know what I really love this series.

No comments:

Post a Comment