Sherlock Holmes and the Cornwall Affair

By: Johanna Rieke

Narrated by: David Bufton

Do you love Cornwall, with its cliffs and breakers, its sleepy fishing harbors and villages? Would you like to meet a real English lord? And do you enjoy an authentic, well-researched historical crime story?

With the author, you will accompany the renowned Baker Street Detective Sherlock Holmes and his friend Dr. Watson on their journey to Cornwall. There, in idyllic surroundings, they are faced with seemingly impenetrable questions, leading to desperate villainy. A 50-year-old history of intrigue, smuggling, betrayal, murder, and revenge waits to be revealed, and you are there, with Holmes and Watson.

©2020 Johanna Reike (P)2020 MX Publishing

A well researched history of Cornwall

There were several large info dumps on Cornwall, the history of British railroads, and ancient monuments. It felt like the author telling us that if they had gone to all the trouble of finding these tidbits, then by jingo we were going to be blessed with them, too.

Other than that, it was okay as a Sherlock Holmes story. Not very hard to suss out, but not too badly told.

As for the narrator, I was not a fan. All the characters sounded more or less the same, and his reading voice was barely more than a monotone. A decent text to speech program could have done almost as good a job.

All in all, I can’t give this a full throated endorsement, but you might find it worth a few hours of your time.

Another excellent Sherlock Holmes pastiche!

Johanna Rieke has once again proven that she is more than capable to write Arthur Conan Doyle-like Sherlock Holmes pastiches. She captures the atmosphere, the language and the culture of the times. The story has the classic elements of a good Holmes story: a mansion house, crashing waves along a rugged coastline, a small village and a resident Lord of the Manor. Oh, and a series of murders to boot! Read by the great David Bufton, this book will just fly by.

Narrative is not engaging and is constantly sidelined

Story drags. Narrative is constantly sidelined by extraneous details, descriptions, and history distracting from plot. Plot is difficult to follow and not very interesting. Narration is droning and does not differentiate between characters.