Death on a Pale Horse

Lost Sherlock #6

by Donald Serrell Thomas

In a momentous period of British history, Donald Thomas’s latest Sherlock Holmes adventure pits the Great Detective and his faithful biographer, Dr. John Watson, against an international conspiracy led by a disgraced English officer. Colonel Hunter Moran bears upon him “The Mark of the Beast”; his satanic ingenuity leaves a spectacular trail of devastation. It runs from the annihilation of a British armored column by Zulu tribesmen armed only with shields and spears, to a life-and-death struggle on the sinking passenger steamer Comtesse de Flandre. The heir to the French empire lies dead in the African dust. Europe is brought to the brink of war by forged despatches, designed to enrich gun-runners and assassins. The gold-fields and diamond mines of South Africa become the playground of organized crime. Only the detective genius of Holmes can prove a match for the unfolding criminality of Moran and his associates. With Watson and Mycroft at his side, Sherlock Holmes again demonstrates although the powers of the state and the underworld may try to overpower him, they will never out-think his splendid analytical mind at the height of its powers.

Genres: Mystery, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, Crime, British Literature, War

400 pages, Paperback

First published October 15, 2012

About the author

aka Francis Selwyn

Donald Serrell Thomas is an English author of (primarily) Victorian-era historical, crime and detective fiction, as well as books on factual crime and criminals, in particular several academic books on the history of crime in London. He has written a number of biographies, two volumes of poetry, and has also edited volumes of poetry by John Dryden and the Pre-Raphaelites.

Reviews

[Sharron · Rating 3 out of 5]

I've not yet read the preceding titles in this series nor for that matter anything else by this rather prolific author so I picked this book up with no particular expectations. I'm glad I did, however, as I found it quite entertaining though not quite as entertaining as Anthony Horowitz's House of Silk. A word of caution though about Death on a Pale Horse. The first forty or so pages are not well written. They are intended to mimic a military dispatch and they do indeed accurately reflect the dry reporting style of such. But if you are a first time reader of a novel by Mr. Thomas, you may, as was I, be sorely tempted to move on to another more engaging novel. That said, I'm glad I persevered but still, it's a poor choice for an opening chapter. Fortunately, the plot takes off after that and the story is indeed a good read. In fact, it would be an ideal choice for one of the Robert Downey, Jr/Jude Law Sherlock Holmes' movies, a rollickingly good adventure story. I plan to look for earlier titles in this series.

[Jen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Death on a Pale Horse: Sherlock Holmes on Her Majesty's Secret Service will be released on March 6. Another Sherlock Holmes pastiche, the novel kept me glued to the pages (so to speak, it was an ebook), and I enjoyed it as much as the earlier pastiche by John Gardner featuring Moriarty.

I wasn't aware of Thomas' previous novels about Holmes, but he has also written The Execution of Sherlock Holmes, Sherlock Holmes and the King's Evil, and Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly, and more.

Thomas is a prolific writer in both fiction and nonfiction: "His biography of Robert Browning was short-listed for the Whitbread Award and he received The Gregory Award from T. S. Eliot personally for his poetry collection Points of Contact." from the Amazon page

Holmes and Watson, with Mycroft's aid, are determined to keep the evil
Colonel Moran from creating chaos and war across Europe. Intent on revenge, Moran has staged a massacre of a British force by Zulu tribesmen, the murder of the heir to the French throne, forged dispatches to heads of state, and other events geared to cause death and destruction. Initially, no one knows that one man has engineered these disasters, but Holmes, Watson, and Mycroft set their sights on Moran and pursue him with a vengeance.

From Net Galley and Open Road Media, I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and am glad to have discovered another "new to me" author.

Mystery. 2012. print version 400 pages. ISBN-10: 1605983942

[Mandy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Originally published on Unravellations.

I have been strongly attracted to this cover for some time, but the reviews on Goodreads didn’t seem great so I had passed up on this book until I decided to throw caution to the winds and give it a go.

One of the most major problems about this book is the overload of information and details. It is clear that Thomas knows his stuff about English military history, and even other things like the anatomy of a paddle steamer and how its crew work. He shows it, and he shows it abundantly. The first third of the book was honestly a bit of a drag because it detailed specific battles that the English army fought in Zululand and other places in South Africa. Of course, these battles were central to the main plot line, which was that of Col. Rawdon Moran (brother of the infamous Sebastian Moran) being a background puppeteer of all these spectacular English defeats in South Africa. But I felt the language here far too technical, and it lost my attention many times. I fairly skipped over paragraphs and paragraphs of strategies and men being killed in the carnage of war. Names were thrown around that never had any relevance to the central plot, and only served to confuse me further. I almost gave up at this point. However, I persevered and was rewarded for my determination.

When I was wading through the military history bits of the novel, though, I decided to look up this whole period in history on Wikipedia. I was fairly sure that it was inspired by real-life historical events, and I was right. Reading up on the death of the Prince Imperial Louis Napoleon of France, as well as that of his main escort, Captain Jahleel Brenton Carey, certainly helped a lot in the understanding of plot events that unfolded after. If I hadn’t, I would be even more lost than I was.

I was also pleasantly surprised at some of the plot twists, like the Rev. Dordonan actually being Major Putney-Wilson, and Josh Sellon turning up dead. Thomas also likes to weave in a sort of timeline into the story. This entire case was supposed to have happen shortly after Holmes and Watson meet, so there were some brief mentions of the “Brixton Road mystery”, Mary Morstan and a commissionaire who featured in a small role in one of the earlier cases, Albert Gibbons, makes a bigger appearance. I was neutral about this timeline thing – it wasn’t a distraction, but it wasn’t necessary either.

I also thought Mycroft Holmes served up a deus ex machina, revealing a large part of the backstory when he appears halfway through the investigation. I thought the rivalry between Mycroft and Sherlock slightly too overstated in this book, though. Whatever rivalry there was in the original canon, it was kept very subtle and under wraps. Here, Sherlock looks at his brother “coldly” and Mycroft comes across as a pompous know-it-all.

Watson, being our faithful narrator as always, remains completely in the dark most of the time. It is good and well that us readers remain in the dark with him, which is the whole point of him being a narrator. Plot twists were not so easily guessable that we would think Watson being deliberately obtuse. At one point in the story, Watson receives a ciphered telegram from Holmes, which he takes about 2 pages of soliloquy just to decipher. While I like that Watson shows his struggles as a mere mortal with a brain that works at a normal speed, but this also exemplifies the problem with Thomas’s writing. There is just too much detail. A few lines would’ve sufficed to let the reader understand how much problems Watson encounters with the cipher, rather than pen down his stream of consciousness.

Luckily, I found that his writing, during the more exciting parts of the book, was sufficiently in tune with that of Arthur Conan Doyle’s, so much so that sometimes I forgot that I’m not actually reading an original Sherlock Holmes story. This in itself is a great plus point for me, though it didn’t mean that I managed to sit through every word in the novel. I would certainly pick up more of Donald Thomas’s books in the future, and in fact I have already borrowed another one from his Lost Sherlock series, Sherlock Holmes and the Ghosts of Bly. I would still try out more of Thomas’s books, in the sanguine hope that if his stories didn’t center so much around military history, they would read better.

[Tim Robinson · Rating 3 out of 5]

A very intense, very detailed, very military case.


Things are going very badly for the British in South Africa, and there is a scarlet thread running through it all. Yet when all is said and done, it's just a man-hunt: the name, character, appearance and history of the perpetrator are established early in the book. I didn't feel the need to finish it.


Did everyone spot the deliberate mistakes?
* There can be no such thing as the "banister of a bungalow", for a banister implies stairs and bungalow has only a single floor.
* Watson claims to have been shot in the right shoulder, but Holmes detects the wound in his left arm.

[Mari · Rating 2 out of 5]

This pastiche is tedious and lacking the charm of the original stories.

The first 100 pages is split up into a long winded and bland background account of one of the main incidents of the mystery, followed by another long winded account of Watson's military service, then followed by yet another tedious summary of how Holmes and Watson met. Why even include a chapter long summary of their meeting (that's significantly longer than their first meeting in the original stories) when most of the people who will read this book already know all of this information?

The book picks up a little after the first 100 pages (when the mystery is FINALLY introduced), but the mystery just wasn't interesting enough to make me want to continue slogging my way through it. It didn't help that Donald Thomas would often have unnecessarily long paragraphs that didn't have any important information in them.

The author somehow managed to make all of the original ACD characters and the new characters boring and bland. There was zero chemistry between any of them. One of my favorite things about Sherlock Holmes pastiches is how authors show Holmes and Watson's camaraderie. I didn't get any sense of camaraderie from this book.

And as a final quip: why did the author feel the need to go out of his way to mess with the canon? Not only does he change Holmes's name, he also introduces characters earlier than they appeared in the canon and has Watson learn about Holmes's profession before he even moves in with Holmes. I don't mind if author's mess with the canon a little, but Donald Thomas went too far with this one, and doesn't even try to explain the inconsistencies that he creates.

[Outlander · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have to say I really like this authors' Sherlock Holmes pastiches, his short stories are brilliant but this is the first longer story I have read, so far. I see why is subtitled OHMSS as although it has oodles of detection as the main vein, it is (first and foremost) a Mycroft undercover tale too. This has a long back story (as Sir A C Doyle did with his 4 long tales) which is heavy with historical ingredients and political intrigue. This is one of the best SH pastiche authors to date, worthy of Doyle's mantel, and is a great loss to the noble art of the wordsmith.

[Mrs. Hassig · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant writing and good and scary! My only real knowledge about South Africa was from reading James Michener's "The Covenant." In this Sherlock Holmes mystery, the author uses documents from the witnesses of a British massacre against the Zulus in South Africa and several assassinations, narration from Dr. Watson's writings, and several creepy artifacts including a cut off head! The devil behind all of these events is a friend of Moriarty and evil beyond measure! As always, Holmes is always one step ahead of everyone, especially Scotland Yard! If you love Holmes, you'll enjoy this book!

[Julie · Rating 4 out of 5]

An excellent mystery, well written considering the number of events, locales, murders, characters and time periods. That being said, the tempo of the book suffers in an effort give the reader a clear understanding of each event relative to its time and place and characters. At the end it was well worth the read.

[Pamela · Rating 3 out of 5]

Don't be put off by the title story. It's long, it's boring, it's tedious. Consider it an homage to Doyle's fascination with the Boer War. After that's out of the way, Thomas does his usual good job.

A very readable (minus first story) pastiche that captures the original Holmes and Watson very well.

[Marie · Rating 4 out of 5]

3.75 stars.

The author is brilliant. The research and knowledge of 19th century events and politics, carefully woven into a fictional narrative, is superbly done. I learned so much about history here but, of course, I also enjoyed the mystery greatly.

[Pat Beard · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not as good as his short stories, I found this a bit tedious in spots.

[Sherry · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story was macabre and interesting and so good to see S.H./J.W. again. The writing was a tad difficult to follow at times but otherwise was a good read.

[Laura · Rating 4 out of 5]

Really interesting story that weaves between what we know of SH and Watson with another broader story of international intrigue and history. Well-read.

[Carol Stedry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A little slow at the beginning but a good adventure that feels very much like one of Doyle's.

[Rena Sherwood · Rating 5 out of 5]

Donald Thomas's early Sherlock Holmes pastiches were terribly slow and complicated. But he got better as he got older. Most of his Holmes pastiches are short story collections but here he goes into the form Thomas writes best -- book length. Thomas is able to indulge his love for history as well as spy games here.

This book keeps up with the tradition of not having Holmes be the center of attention throughout. The four Sherlock Holmes novels Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote had large chunks of backstory or other explanations where Holmes is nowhere to be seen. Here Thomas these parts very well and writes a really good fiction book about war and politics of the Victorian era.



The only problem is that you do need to know something about the Victorian times and The Great Game (politics-wise not Sherlock Holmes-fan-wise) in order to understand what is going on here. I'm not a huge Victorian era scholar but this novel seems to be (more or less) historically accurate.

This book will not appeal to all Sherlock Holmes fan, but it sure did to this one.

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Death on a Pale Horse is my type of mystery: suspense but minimum violence, enjoyment of character interaction (between Holmes and Watson), intriguing mystery based on a real incident (the terrible British military defeat in South-East Africa at Isandhlwana in 1879); and finally, excellent detail about a lost era. I enjoyed the story itself as well as a portrayal of the Victorian era, the military adventures that were so much a part of the British story at that time.

Why did Britain suffer so many losses within so short a period of time? Isandhlwana, assassination of the heir claimant to the French throne while under British protection, defeat of the British by the Transvaal Boers. The author weaves a story of a revengeful hunter and his manipulations of an empire.

Watson's doings are every bit as interesting as Holmes, and I enjoyed getting to know him.

[Jc · Rating 4 out of 5]

This Holmes pastiche is not for everyone. You have to both be into Holmes AND a student of Victorian-era history. A number of readers, expecting a typical Holmes story, were annoyed at the book as it had so much military history. But, that is what it is -- an exploration into the trials and tribulations of empire. Britain had a number of major military disasters in the last half of the 19th century. What if there was a conspiratorial connection tying these disasters together? The good doctor and his detective colleague must find out. Dramatic history through the eyes of Dr. Watson. Donald Thomas has a few interesting Holmes pastiches under his belt, and this is an exciting addition.

[Deb · Rating 3 out of 5]

Donald Thomas has written several very good Sherlock Holmes tales, in a close approximation of Sir Arthur Conan-Doyle's original style. This outing was a bit disappointing, as it was largely a history lesson about the decline of the British Empire, wrapped up in the tale of a nefarious villain out for revenge and profit. It does have a rather ripping denouement involving a collision of ships in the English Channel and our heroes (Watson and Holmes) facing down the villain on a sinking ship. So, if you are prepared for a long set-up, there is a fine ending to the tale. Otherwise, I would recommend some of Mr. Thomas' other Holmes tales as a first trial.

[Annie Oosterwyk · Rating 3 out of 5]

I almost never jump into a series this late, but I felt pretty safe with a Sherlock Holmes mystery. I enjoyed the beginning of the book more than the rest, with Watson's description of the Zulu and Boer wars in South Africa and the original disgrace and creation of the story's villain.
After that it seemed to slow down, although I did enjoy the explanation of Mycroft's character and the Diogenes Club.
The writing was quite good and the author does a great job of describing how machines and tools of the period work. I will probably try another one, but not immediately.

[Jeff Reno · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good Sherlock Holmes story, but very slow in the beginning. There was a lot of background development in the beginning that almost made me put the book down, but once I suffered through it and got to the heart of the story it was a good read. I will definitely try another of Thomas' Sherlock Holmes stories to see if some are faster paced.

[Sage Stubbs · Rating 4 out of 5]

I've enjoyed most of the Sherlock Holmes adventures, and this one is no exception! Yes, the pacing in the beginning is very slow, but when you get to the actual story after all the letters, the story as a whole starts to pick up. The characterization is spot on, and the climax is amazing. It's definitely worthy of being a true Sherlock Holmes novel.

[Harry · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't like the opening 50 pages that described a military ambush. Not my cup of tea and I thought the writing was overdone and stilted. The rest of the book was more standard Sherlock Holmes with references to the first bit. That was decent but predictable. I guess that's what you expect in a Sherlock book but I would have liked a little surprise.

[Kate Clayton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Started well and ended well. Was a bit of a drag in the middle, but I think I'm just not used to the old-fashioned writing style. Donald Thomas does a good job of imitating Arthur Conan Doyle's writing style and characterization of Sherlock and Watson- at times I forgot I was reading a modern reboot.

[Calvin Daniels · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a heavier book than many written of Sherlock Holmes (the first 40 pages recount one battle in Africa).

That may turn some off, but I liked it.

The detective work was less from Holmes though. It was too much where he had to put a few puzzle pieces together, rather than ferret out the mystery.

Still overall a winner if you like SH.

[Hannah · Rating 3 out of 5]

As noted in other reviews, the history of the time period tends to take over the mystery itself. But as always, with any Sherlock Holmes story, when written as close to Doyle's style of writing, is interesting. Always makes me finish the book wishing my powers of perception were better.

[Cori North · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not gripping, but readable. Enough to try his other Sherlock & Watson books in the series out.

[Larry · Rating 5 out of 5]

Donald Thomas is the most prolific of the neo-Holmes authors, and catches the spirit of Holmes and Watson pretty effectively.

[Margaret · Rating 1 out of 5]

When an author doesn't even get the name of a canon character correct, I can't be bothered persevering with the book.

[Kenneth Cook · Rating 5 out of 5]

excellent absorbing read-top notch Holmes story.

[Sarah · Rating 2 out of 5]

I usually enjoy Donald Thomas' Sherlock Holmes novels but this one dragged too much for me to really enjoy.