I first read The Sherlockian when my personal journey with Holmes was just beginning. My lasting impressions of the book included that (1) it had satisfying dual mysteries, (2) Bram Stoker and Arthur Conan Doyle dress in drag, and (3) it was essentially an homage to Holmes fans everywhere. Years later and listening to the audiobook with my partner, only two of these impressions remain.

Technically The Sherlockian still has two mysteries, but only one of them is satisfying. After writing Holmes' frothy demise, Arthur Conan Doyle ignores Holmes' fan letters that ask the detective to help on real-life cases. That is, until a lesbian suffragette sends him an explosive impetus to get off his duff. With the charismatic, world-savvy Bram Stoker at his side, Doyle does indeed get into drag, vividly imagine himself in a wedding dress, and solve three murders. The lowkey queer vibes are strong. Despite the period typical misogyny and sometimes overly detailed brutalization of women, my partner and I thoroughly enjoyed this turn-of-the-century mystery. That sounds like a large caveat, but those sections are very small and skippable. The audiobook narrator does a fabulous job with everyone's accents.

An avid diariest, Doyle writes this adventure down, but the diary is lost and the contents remain unknown. Fast forwarding to the twenty-first century, Doyle's missing diary is considered the Holy Grail of Sherlockians, with fans devoting their entire academic careers to finding it. One such is Alex Cato, and he claims the impossible: he found the diary. When Alex is garroted with his shoelace before he can present it, a young Sherlockian named Harold and a mysterious journalist named Sarah take up the case to find his murderer and the diary.

Harold's qualification for this role is that he's read lots of books. Seriously. That's...it. It's a lovely fantasy for book nerds that one day the minutia of our fandom will solve a Big Important Thing, but that fantasy is poorly executed here. Pretending he's Holmes and police work hasn't advanced in a century, Harold contaminates crime scenes, destroys historical artifacts, wheedles witnesses, and refuses to manage his own emotions. When he solves the mystery, it's unclear whether he even tells Alex's surviving family or the police. Like Watson before her, Sarah is there to get Harold to talk, but, unlike Watson, she's not developed enough as her own person. More given a dartboard-picked backstory.

Despite the disappointment of the modern era mystery, The Sherlockian is still a love letter to Sherlock Holmes fans past and present. Pages and pages are devoted to Sherlockian culture and Doyle' sections offer insights to his immediate audience. As someone familiar with the community, it made me smile. Since the novel is a thriller, the unhealthily obsessed side of fandom gets a lot of attention. A theme throughout the novel is whether the process of solving a puzzle or the answer to the puzzle is more enjoyable. I couldn't relate to it. That pure serotonin blast and sense of triumph when I solve a problem is obviously best??? If the puzzle itself is what makes happy sparkles explode inside you, then re-arrange your life to be more full of puzzles??? I'm not doing rocket science here. Don't do what Harold or Alex do, because W O W that's not good.

In conclusion, I would give the Doyle & Stoker mystery four stars and the modern mystery one star, so the whole book will receive two stars. I can't say I recommend The Sherlockian to anyone, unless I stumble across someone who really wants to know about Holmes fan culture. But then, you're better off reading a Doyle biography and scrolling through fanfiction on ArchiveOfOurOwn.