Sherlock Holmes and the Real Thing

by Nicholas Meyer Narrated by David Robb, Nick Meyer

Overview

London, 189-: The great city is brought to a standstill by a series of blizzards and Sherlock Holmes is bored to distraction. It would take a miracle to bring a case to the detective's door . . .

What arrives is not promising: a landlady who complains her artist tenant is behind on rent. Not exactly the miracle for which Holmes was hoping. But, next thing you know, there are several corpses and Sherlock Holmes and his biographer, John H. Watson, MD, find themselves drawn into one of the most bizarre cases of the great detective's career. And into the cutthroat big business of Art, where chicanery and mendacity (and cut throats) proliferate.

What makes a work of art worth killing for? Is it the artist, his mistress, his dealer, or his blackmailer? The cast of characters is large. But are they perpetrators, accomplices, or victims? And just who is Juliet Packwood, with whom Watson has become infatuated?

Oh, and there's one other problem: Is this a genuine Holmes case or a clever forgery? Is this the real thing?

If you can't tell the difference, what is the difference?

Editorial Reviews

From the Publisher

"[Meyer’s] best revamp of the Conan Doyle canon . . . he packs the action with devilish surprises. Baker Street regulars will be thrilled."— Publishers Weekly STARRED REVIEW

"A generation of readers will be ever grateful for [Meyer’s] efforts."— Kirkus STARRED REVIEW

"Of all the Holmes novelists—and there are a lot of them—Meyer is one of the best."— Booklist

"In the wide world of Sherlockiana, no living author looms as large as Nicholas Meyer. By some splendid alchemy he channels the very spirit of Conan Doyle, creating utterly thrilling and boundlessly inventive new adventures for Baker Street's finest. Sherlock Holmes and the Real Thing is a joy from start to finish, plotted and written with astonishing verve. I'm in awe; it's brilliant."— Tom Mead, author of the Joseph Spector Locked Room Mysteries

"Is the latest book edited by Mr. Meyer ‘the real thing’? If the actual question is, ‘Does the tale thrill and entertain in the genuine voice of John H. Watson, M.D.?’ the answer is a resounding and grateful ‘Yes!’ . . . A splendid tale, complete with an unforeseen villain!"— Leslie S. Klinger, editor, New Annotated Sherlock Holmes

"For me, Nicholas Meyer has managed the impossible, which is to sound exactly like Arthur Conan Doyle."— Julian Fellowes, creator of Downton Abbey and The Gilded Age

Kirkus Reviews

★ 2025-07-17
First, the bad news: In his closing acknowledgments, Meyer, dropping his pose as Dr. John H. Watson’s editor, announces: “I’m thinking this will be my last Holmes novel.”

Now, the other news, which is mostly excellent except for Rupert Milestone, the portrait painter who hasn’t paid the rent for his Notting Hill studio for three months. His landlady, recently widowed Lady Vera Glendenning, engages Holmes to find him, but the trail has gone cold—though not as cold as the body the Metropolitan Police eventually discover in a location as gruesome as it is unoriginal. In life, Milestone seems to have been an immensely gifted mimic who could copy the styles of masters old and new while displaying precious little originality of his own. The news that he was also a restorer who worked for fearsomely dominant art dealer Sir Jonathan Van Dam, Lord Southbank, poses questions about the relations between the paintings he restored and those he created. Calling on Juliet Packwood, the niece of Milestone’s dealer (and the daughter of Watson’s late comrade-in-arms Col. John Packwood), and Signor Garibaldi, Van Dam’s authenticator, leads Watson to a theory of the case and an amatory attachment that may compromise his deductions. At length, Holmes, more disinterested, more analytical, and able to see more complications beneath the obvious solution, leads Watson and the Met to a denouement as surprising and fulfilling as any in the sacred scriptures themselves. The whole exercise is adorned with the usual footnotes and an increasingly pointed and self-reflexive series of discussions about copies, forgeries, and the “real thing.”

Though Meyer ends by identifying himself as a forger, a generation of readers will be ever grateful for his efforts.

Product Details

BN ID:	2940195573256
Publisher:	HighBridge Company
Publication date:	08/26/2025
Edition description:	Unabridged

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