The Adventure of the Peculiar Protocols

Starred review from July 8, 2019
Set in 1905, Meyer’s memorable fourth Sherlock Holmes novel, his first since 1993’s The Canary Trainer, convincingly mimics Conan Doyle’s writing style and characterizations. After the murder of British operative Manya Lippman, Holmes’s brother, Mycroft, the dead woman’s employer, asks for help in tracing the origins of the papers found on her corpse. Lippman apparently paid with her life for somehow obtaining a French version of the anti-Semitic tract known as The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, which describe a Jewish plot for world domination. Mycroft is concerned about a possible connection between the documents, the annual meetings of Jews committed to the establishment of a Jewish homeland, and the untimely death of Zionist leader Theodor Herzl, who apparently suffered a heart attack right before he could be interviewed by one of Mycroft’s agents. Holmes and Watson’s pursuit of the truth takes them to France and Russia, where their ethics face a severe test. Meyer cleverly plays with his audience’s expectations, noting at the outset that the case was one of Holmes’s rare failures. Sherlockians will hope for a shorter wait for his next pastiche. Author tour. Agent: Charlotte Sheedy, Charlotte Sheedy Literary.

August 15, 2019
Prolific screenwriter, showrunner, and sometime Sherlock-ian Meyer (The Canary Trainer, 1993, etc.) returns to update the Sacred Canon once more with a previously undiscovered adventure from 1905 that might just as well have stayed hidden. As so often in latter-day Holmes pastiches, the great detective's brother, Mycroft, drags him into this one. Popping up at a dinner Dr. John Watson gives for Sherlock's 50th birthday, Mycroft quietly demands a meeting the next morning at the Diogenes Club, where he shows his brother a single bloodstained page of a manuscript so incendiary that it's already provoked the murder of Manya Lippman, Mycroft's colleague in the Secret Intelligence Service. The manuscript, written in French, is The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, a forged plan for world domination designed to stoke anti-Semitism that Mycroft's determined to suppress or discredit before it can metastasize and turn a generation yet unborn against the Jews. Since the Protocols are a real-life phenomenon, not so much peculiar as monstrous, that would ultimately travel the world to be embraced by parties from Hitler to Hamas, it's no surprise to read in Meyer's introductory note that this adventure marks "the biggest and most consequential failure of the detective's entire career." But that's not for lack of trying. Tracing the source of the monstrous hoax to Russia, Holmes travels with Watson and American translator Anna Walling across Europe to the czar's kingdom, quickly identifies the manuscript's vengeful creator, and extracts a written confession that it's a forgery and a plagiarism to boot before returning on the Orient Express for a climactic episode cribbed, as Meyer's closing Acknowledgments cheerfully admit, from Alfred Hitchcock's film The Lady Vanishes. So many historical figures, from translator Constance Garnett to future Israeli president Chaim Weizmann, put in appearances that only the canniest readers will spot the few characters who are actually invented rather than summoned. The mystery is slight and the frequently coy footnotes annoying, but there's sturdy adventure for Sherlock-ians whose appetites remain unsated.

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Starred review from September 1, 2019

Rejoice, Sherlock fans! Meyer returns with another thrilling adventure for Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson (after 1993's The Canary Trainer and 1976's The West End Horror). In 1905, Holmes and Watson begin a secret investigation at the request of Mycroft Holmes. A British agent has been murdered while smuggling The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a manuscript that endangers the entire Jewish population, The quest leads Holmes and Watson, accompanied by a gorgeous Russian translator, on a perilous journey from Paris to Russia aboard the Orient Express. The intrepid trio seek the manuscript's creator in a desperate attempt to stop the insidious spread of the anti-Semitic document. A fabulous Sherlockian tale ensues, complete with unexpected twists, disguises, abduction, and Russian roulette. VERDICT Director and author Meyer puts his own stamp on the Holmes and Watson tradition, basing his story on historic events with contemporary relevance, as lies become accepted as truth by means of willful ignorance. Holmes enthusiasts will relish this well-crafted novel.--Barbara Clark-Greene, Westerly, RI

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2019
Meyer, author of the 1974 best-seller The Seven Per Cent Solution and two other novels in his Sherlock Holmes series, Journals of John H. Watson, M.D., returns to the series after a 26-year gap following The Canary Trainer. Here Holmes and Watson are called upon to prevent the spread of a hoax. The titular Procotols refer to the spurious Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a document written in the early twentieth century that purported to describe a Jewish plan for world domination. In Meyer's inventive work, the detectives seek the document's publisher to extract a confession that the material is an anti-Semitic hoax, leading the pair on a dangerous trek across Europe, largely on the Orient Express. The parallels drawn to the rise of fascism today will resonate with readers, as will the idea that, even if the Protocols are proven fake, it won't matter. The focus on Watson's point of view is handled effectively, but all of the characters will draw readers into an absorbing and exciting tale that also imparts some lesser-known history (Henry Ford was one of the tract's publishers, for example). A welcome return for Meyer.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)