The Brothers of Baker Street : Baker Street brothers #2 / Michael Robertson.

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Title:

Author:

Robertson, Michael, 1951-

ISBN:

9780312538132

Publication Information:

New York : Minotaur Books, 2011.

Physical Description:

274 p.

Series:

Baker Street Brothers #2

Abstract:

Hoping to recoup his losses after answering a misdirected letter to Sherlock Holmes, barrister Reggie Heath represents a limousine driver who has been accused of murdering two tourists, a case that is complicated by a letter from a descendant of Professor Moriarty.

Subject Term:

Brothers -- Fiction.

Legal stories -- England -- Fiction.

Murder -- Investigation -- Fiction.

Holmes, Sherlock (Fictitious character) -- Fiction.

Homicide -- Fiction.

Geographic Term:

London (England) -- Fiction.

Genre:

Legal stories.

Detective and mystery stories.

Available:*

Library	Material Type	Item Barcode	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Avon-Washington Township Public Library	Adult Mystery Fiction Book Hardback	120791002107454	M ROB	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

The second in a highly original and absolutely marvelous series about two brother lawyers who lease offices on London's Baker Street--and begin receiving mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes

When brothers Reggie and Nigel Heath choose 221B Baker Street as the location for their law office, they don't expect that their new office space would come with one huge stipulation, answering the letters sent to Sherlock Holmes, the most famous resident of that address.

Reggie is distressed because the love of his life, actress Laura Rankin (whom Nigel also adores), is gallivanting around with media mogul Lord Buxton. And while Reggie is working on a new case involving one of London's Black Cab drivers who is accused of murdering two American tourists, the letters to Sherlock Holmes are piling up. There s even one from someone who claims to be the descendent of Professor James Moriarty.

With a case that would have puzzled even Sherlock himself and a pair of brother sleuths more different than night and day, The Brothers of Baker Street is sure to please mystery fans whatever their address.

Reviews (5)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Set in 1997, Robertson's second mystery featuring barrister Reggie Heath, whose chambers are located at Sherlock Holmes's legendary address, offers pacing, prose, and plotting at a level far above that of its predecessor, 2009's The Baker Street Letters. On returning to London from California, Heath finds underwhelming demand for his professional services as well as pressure to abide by the terms of his lease by responding to letters addressed to the fictional character. An attractive solicitor, Darla Rennie, retains Heath to represent Neil Walters, a cab driver accused of murdering a young couple. Despite having been burned in his previous criminal case, Heath dives into defending Walters, only to end up in jeopardy himself. He must rely on his brother, Nigel, for help in escaping his peril, which may be connected with a letter writer to Baker Street who signs his correspondence Moriarty. An extremely clever evil scheme will delight readers. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Sherlock Holmes isn't back, but Dr. Moriarty is, sort of, in this delightful romp that offers more tension and suspense than a dozen fat thrillers with bloody knives on the cover. It still manages to be funny, rather in the Kingsley Amis manner. Set in modern London, with plenty of Foster's and Jaguars, the novel has two leading men in the British manner, and for all their silly banter, they'd best not be underrated. Reggie is a barrister who hasn't let failure slow him; he's rebounding with a new client. His brother Nigel, fresh from therapy designed to make losers feel better, is there to carry the plot when Reggie falters. They aren't just any two failing lawyers. Their offices are on the 200 block of Baker Street, and their lease requires that they answer all mail addressed to Sherlock Holmes. Naturally, that leads to the occasional spot of sleuthing. This time, they tackle an ersatz Moriarty and his villainous scheme to besmirch the beloved London taxis. The last third of the novel, with its murder-and-chase scene, is one of the finest, scariest sequences in current crime fiction. But why doesn't Robertson explain that the name of the drivers' pub, Flounder and Dab, is Cockney rhyming slang for taxicab? For anglophiles, crime-o-philes, and all fans of wonderful writing.--Crinklaw, Don Copyright 2010 Booklist

New York Review of Books Review

Henning Mankell has spoken: Detective Chief Inspector Kurt Wallander has solved his last case. Making this news more bitter, the alcoholic, diabetic, antisocial and perpetually dour Swedish detective is at his gloomy best in THE TROUBLED MAN (Knopf, $26.95). After his colleagues on the Ystad police force gave him a 50th-birthday party, Wallander started keeping a record of all the people he knew of who were now dead, a morbid task that he abandoned after the 10th suicide. Five years later, he bought a house near the sea and acquired a dog, indicating some improvement in his mental health. But having reached the age of 60, Wallander has become lonely and despondent. "His life was now centered increasingly on recalling things from the past that he now realized he missed," Mankell observes, in the melancholy words of Laurie Thompson's translation. Wallander snaps out of his depression when his daughter, Linda, gives birth to his first grandchild, an event that leaves him "utterly defenseless" and (dare it be said?) happy. Which accounts for his concern when Linda's future father-in-law, a retired naval officer named Hakan von Enke, goes missing shortly after taking the detective into his confidence about an incident in 1982 involving Russian submarines infiltrating Swedish territorial waters. A month after von Enke disappears, his wife also drops out of sight, prompting Wallander to look more carefully at the conspiracy theories that had long obsessed her husband. As Wallander learns more about how Sweden maintained its neutrality in the swamp politics of the cold war, he realizes "how little he actually knew about the world he had lived in," and wonders if that "unwillingness to care about the real world" is typical of his generation. That's the kind of ideological question that matters to Wallander, who is forever flogging himself for the youthful indifference that left him ignorant of the ruthlessness of realpolitik and feeling helpless to do anything about it. "I sometimes manage to help people by making sure that criminals are removed from the streets," he acknowledges. "But aside from that?" Aside from that, he saves our sanity by taking the weight of the world off our minds and onto his own shoulders - an honorable legacy for someone who thought all his friends were dead. The poised, confident and extraordinarily efficient heroine of Jacqueline Winspear's new Maisie Dobbs novel, A LESSON IN SECRETS (Harper/HarperCollins, $25.99), seems far removed from the young nurse whose World War I battlefield experiences left her determined to apply her training in the new science of psychology to the treatment of emotionally scarred soldiers and their families. Maisie is still helping people in 1932, but as a private investigator with a nice legacy to finance her comfortable life and her expanding London firm, she devotes more time to organizing her friends' lives and helping out the Special Branch. Maisie's current assignment finds her working undercover as a junior lecturer in philosophy at a Cambridge college founded on "the concept of peace" by a pacifist who is rudely dispatched by an assassin. British intelligence suspects that the school's predominantly foreign student body might be inculcating idealistic British youth with radical ideas imported from Russia. But Maisie, who is prescient in the way heroines tend to be in historical fiction, is more concerned about the impact of National Socialism in Germany. The story isn't half bad, but Maisie's sortie into group psychology can't touch the sensitive work she once did with shell-shocked soldiers. According to the terms of their lease, drolly recounted in Michael Robertson's first mystery, "The Baker Street Letters," Reggie and Nigel Heath were able to set up their modern-day law practice in the desirable 200 block of Baker Street by agreeing to answer all correspondence addressed to Sherlock Holmes at 221B. Reggie, the less whimsical of the pair, has been neglecting that responsibility, so in THE BROTHERS OF BAKER STREET (Thomas Dunne/Minotaur, $24.99) that task falls to Nigel, freeing up Reggie to concentrate on defending a young cab driver accused of robbing and killing two American tourists. An anonymous letter to Holmes gives Reggie a valuable tip, but the communications from a certain Professor Moriarty add a more sinister twist to this breezy and entertaining legal mystery. There's one nice thing about literary puzzles - the clues don't normally involve bloody pentacles or symbolically displayed body parts. A few codes and cryptograms are all you need to get caught up in an enigmatic mystery like THE SCHOOL OF NIGHT (Holt, $25), Louis Bayard's fabricated account of a secret society of brilliant Elizabethan thinkers who challenge conventional 16th-century wisdom by exercising "the freedom to speak their minds." Henry Cavendish, the 21st-century scholar who narrates the story, tumbles to this academic crew when an unscrupulous collector (who would "lay down his life for a Shakespeare quarto") hires him to search the archives of a fellow bibliophile who committed suicide. Leaving Henry to puzzle out the clues in the library, Bayard shifts the story to Tudor England, where members of the eUte circle that meets at Sir Walter Ralegh's Dorset estate are immersed in their esoteric arts. From either perspective, the story is fascinating. And yes, there's a good reason that Shakespeare is not welcome in this company. The bitter, alcoholic, diabetic, antisocial, perpetually dour Kurt Wallander seems to be working his last case.

Kirkus Review

A young British barrister matches wits with a would-be Moriarty while unraveling a modern mystery.When Reggie Heath and his younger brother Nigel set up their fledgling law practice, they never imagined how deeply their Baker Street address would embroil them in the world of detective legend Sherlock Holmes, whose residence Arthur Conan Doyle placed in the same block. The brothers' rental agreement requires them to answer all correspondence addressed to the fictional sleuth, a situation that previously led them into a dangerous Los Angeles mystery (The Baker Street Letters, 2009). Nigel, in fact, is still in California when Reggie receives a taunting letter signed "Moriarty." Reggie hardly gives it a second thought, for he's immersed in the defense of young cab driver Neil Walters, whom a mountain of evidence identifies as the man who robbed and murdered an American tourist couple in the West End, London's theatre district. The case becomes acause clbrein the London press, where public opinion runs strongly against Walters. An anonymous writer claims to be a witness who can exonerate Walters. Unfortunately, his letter is addressed not to Reggie but to Sherlock Holmes. When Nigel returns home to London, he's enormously helpful as a legman but catnip for the salacious media. The fits and starts of the case try the patience of Reggie's long-suffering ladylove Laura; their banter neatly counterpoints the denser, thornier progress of the case.Robertson's sophomore effort gels in the final third, which features a thrilling climax, but not before some unsteady plotting and labored prose.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Library Journal Review

In his second outing (after The Baker Street Letters), barrister Reggie Heath is in desperate straits since returning from California. He has lost his fortune and all of his clients, and he is about to see his girlfriend get engaged to the man who owns the Daily Sun, the newspaper most involved in his public humiliation. Then he is hired to defend a London taxi driver accused of a double murder. Receiving the mail sent to Sherlock Holmes is the starting gate for this fast-paced crime novel as Reggie must unravel the truth about a killer who not only wants to rid the world of Holmes but believes firmly that Reggie is the famous detective. -VERDICT The premise here is as intriguing as that of Barry Grant's novels, which see Holmes thawed out after a century in an ice flow and living in contemporary London. Great fun. (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Excerpts

1 LONDON, AUTUMN 1997 In Mayfair, the owner of an elegant Edwardian white-stone sat down at the garden table with unusually high expectations for breakfast. It was a bright September morning, quite lovely indeed; the roses in the garden were much more fragrant than in many days or weeks past--more so than anyone could possibly understand--and there was every reason to believe that breakfast would be equally remarkable. The servant girl would bring tea and scones for a start. The tea would be hot and dark and would swirl together with the milk like vanilla and caramel taffy; the scones would be fresh and warm and appropriately crumbly when broken in two, and the butter would melt into each half like rain into loose garden soil. The breakfast would be wonderful--especially so because it was no longer necessary to take the medications that accompanied it. No medications, no nausea. No medications, no mental dullness. No medications, no loss of pleasure in the ordinary, everyday elements of life. Not taking the bloody little pills was certainly the way to go. The wonder was why the servant girl still bothered bringing them at all. Several steps away in the parlor, the servant girl--a young woman, who had emigrated from Russia only a few years earlier and shortened her name to Ilsa (because there was a tennis star of that name and people could pronounce it)--arranged a china setting on a silver serving tray, with all the breakfast components her employer was expecting. She placed the medications on the tray as well--a yellow pill for the schizophrenia, a round blue one to alleviate the depression caused by the yellow one; and a square white one to deal with the nausea caused by the blue one, but apparently not to great effect. And there was a small pink one, which was related to the effects of the other three in some complicated way that no one had adequately explained. The pills had been part of the daily regimen ever since Ilsa was first hired. That was almost a year ago now. Ilsa's employer, just a few years older than Ilsa herself, had lost both parents to an automobile accident at that time, and needed some assistance with the daily routine. Ilsa had been brought in to prepare the meals, to put the medicines on the tray, and to do the housekeeping and other chores. She wanted to do all of her tasks well. Keeping the place tidy was more trouble than it should have been. Like a cat bringing presents from the garden, her employer kept discovering and bringing in small pieces of furniture and such from the parents' estate. Ilsa had counted five lamps, three vases, an ancient portable typewriter, and innumerable scrapbooks and folders and yellowed paper items, some of which her employer had begun to take upstairs alone to study in private. But as difficult as the housekeeping was, what worried Ilsa most was the medications. A new doctor had come by--a man Ilsa did not particularly like--and said not to worry about them. So Ilsa tried not to worry. But she continued to put the pills on the tray anyway, as she had been originally told to do. It seemed to her that she still should do so. And she was uncertain of all the regulations in her adopted country; she did not want to get in trouble. Now she brought the breakfast setting out to the garden. And she also brought a copy of the Daily Sun . Ilsa placed the silver tray on the table. Her employer smiled slightly and nodded. Then Ilsa stood at the table and began to read the headlines aloud from the tabloid. This had been become a ritual in recent weeks, and she took some pride in getting good at it. "'Prime Minister Calls for Moratorium on Queue Cutting,'" read Ilsa. "No," said her employer. "'Prince Harry Fathers Love Child with Underage Martian Girl.'" "No." "'Liverpool Louts Stab Man in Front of Pregnant Wife.'" "No. Page two?" "Just adverts." "And on page three?" "A woman in her underwear--and nothing on top. Shall I read the caption?" Ilsa giggled just slightly, because she was beginning to understand the British fondness for bad puns, and she was looking forward to demonstrating that knowledge. "No, Ilsa. I don't need to know about the page-three girl. Go to page four." "Two headlines on page four," said Ilsa. "The first is: 'Taxi Drivers a Terror to Tourists?'" It was an article about a spate of robberies and nonlethal assaults against patrons of Black Cabs. Ilsa read the headline with the proper inflexion, making it sound as alarming as the headline writer clearly intended it to be. "Hmm." Ilsa's employer seemed disappointed and began to butter a scone. "And the second is a lawyer on Baker Street who denies that he's Sherlock Holmes," continued Ilsa. "There's a photo. I think one might call him good-looking, in a stuffy sort of way." Her employer abruptly stopped buttering. There was silence for a moment. Then-- "Let me see it." It was just three short paragraphs, not even breaking news; just a follow-up piece, about one Reggie Health--a thirty-five-year-old London barrister--and the unusual circumstances of a trip he had taken to Los Angeles a short time earlier. Ilsa watched as her employer stared at the passage for a very long time, eyes searching intently, as though there were something more on the page than just the words. "Is something wrong?" said Ilsa. "It's like trying to find a gray cat in the fog," said Ilsa's employer finally, getting up from the table, with the Daily News in hand, and without finishing breakfast. "But I think I am beginning to remember." Ilsa did not ask what was being remembered. She took the tray away, saw that the medications were again untouched, and wished it were not so. Copyright (c) 2011 by Michael Robertson Excerpted from The Brothers of Baker Street by Michael Robertson All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.