The Cthulhu Casebooks - Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows Hardcover – November 15, 2016

This is the first of three volumes which re-imagine (I hate that term) the adventures of Holmes and Watson as taking place in a world beset by the horrors depicted in the fiction of H. P. Lovecraft. Some things work, others don't. To make it work, even in part, we have to accept that the career of Holmes as the world's first Consulting Detective, as chronicled by Watson, is largely fictitious, and that what "actually" happened is very different. Holmes has spent almost his entire career in efforts to keep various extraterrestrial god-like beings and similar powerful entities from taking over the earth, and he has had important help from Watson, Inspector Gregson, and Mycroft.In this particular novel the first of the series, Holmes encounters for the first time a dangerous adversary who is, far from being a "Napoleon of Crime," instead a somewhat pathetic figure who aspires to Lovecraftian godhood. His success (or failure) in this aspiration is detailed in the second novel of the series.If this sounds like your cup of tea, you might enjoy these three linked novels, SHADWELL SHADOWS, MISKATONIC MONSTROSITIES, and SUSSEX SEA-DEVILS.

Since the original Holmes stories always avoided the supernatural, it is difficult to properly introduce that element successfully. Some of the resulting stories can be rather bad, but this is one of the more successful ones. The inclusion of a number of authentic period details added to the atmosphere of the piece. The characters of Holmes and Watson were reasonably true to the original, though owing more to the Rathbone and Bruce movies in some respects. The Mythos details were well done. I feel William Miekle is the master of this genre, but Lovegrove's effort is quite good, and I look forward to the future installments.

According to these memoirs of Holmes by Dr. Watson, these are the REAL facts behind the case and not the toned-down versions written for public consumption. Holmes and Watson are up against the forces of evil in the form of the Elder Gods, the Old Ones, as revealed in HP Lovecraft's writing. This, however, occurred before that writer discovered them and therefore, the two are in a position to realize the danger the world faces if they fail.A good story, well-written in the a. Conan Doyle manner but with enough originality to make the reader want more. There's also a bit of fun on the author's part where he claims kinship to Lovecraft through their similarity of names. This was the first novel I've read by this author but afterward, I studied his list of credits. Now, all I have to do is decide if I want the "real stories" as put out by Watson in the Cthulu Casebooks, or the gentler (?), more expurgated versions of this series. I"m thinking I'll go with the Casebooks first.This novel was purchased by the author for her Kindle, and no remuneration was involved in the writing of this review.

Mr. Lovegrove has written a pitch perfect mashup of Holmsean deductive rationality and Lovecraftian cosmic horror. The superb, clever writing tells an engrossing tale of Holmes' and Watson's encounters with the denizens of the Mythos. And While deductive reasoning abounds the book is at turns scary and creepy. In short, this is Holmes for supernatural/cosmicl horror fans. I love this book and I cannot wait to read all other books by Mr. Lovegrove that depict Holmes' and Watson's unsettling and quite frightening encounters with cosmic horror. Great writing, Mr. Lovegrove. Bravo!

I resisted reading these books for a long time. I am a rationalist myself, and the logical side of Sherlock Holmes has always been more appealing to me. This book came as a pleasant surprise to me. While admittedly less of the rational Holmes, he was there. Looking at this story as if it were a Lovecraftian construction, albeit using Doyle’s characters helped immensely. I recommend this book to those of you like me who very much enjoy both authors. Especially if you enjoy then for very different reasons. Also if you play COC, this will really appeal to you.

There's a lot of potential in the subject matter, but the author wastes so much time explaining the back story that the any suspense or drama is lost. Holmes' drug induced exploration of the Old Ones (et all) reads like a Wikipedia article on the Cthulhu mythos. Moriarty's long-winded exposition comes straight from a 60's TV super-villain. This is such a fun idea, but maybe the logic of Holmes' universe doesn't mesh well with the madness of Lovecraft's universe.

Superb!! Incredibly imaginative and entertaining, with extremely well-written, descriptive, and flowing prose, that instantly sucks you into the Victorian world of Sherlock Holmes (as he faces one of his greatest challenges - and although this may sound cliche, here it's absolutely accurate). And, it doesn't let go as the pressure continuously ratchets up until the climatic end. For any Sherlock Holmes' fan, this is not only one of Holmes' most fascinating cases, it is essentially guaranteed that you'll not put it down until you've finished the last page. Indeed, Conan Doyle would no doubt be extremely proud, as Lovegrove perfectly captures the style and spirit of the great writer himself, with an equally outstanding incorporation of Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. Cannot wait until the 2nd and 3rd in this 3 books series are released! As an aside, I've never read James Lovegrove before, which is clearly my loss before now, but will definitely be reading all of his other Holmes' novels (and exploring his many other works).

The beauty of extending Holmes is that he is contemporaneous with both Jack The Ripper and Dracula, and Doyle was a spiritualist so the stories almost write themselves.That said, I don't understand why the author discards the Doyle cannon in favour of a complete rewrite, "Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter" style. Surely Watson could simply say that some adventures were not suitable for print, but here are three of them?Finaly, I've read a lot of Doyle, and I don't think the author imitates him as well as he thinks he does.

I have and always will be a massive Sherlock Holmes fan and, sadly, I do and always will think that H.P Lovecraft had about as much talent as a block of wood. The man had wonderful ideas, ideas far ahead of his time. Sadly, he just possessed a writing style so dreadfully boring that his ideas were destined never to be done justice by his pen. So, when seeing a Sherlock novel/series featuring the ideas of Lovecraft I hopped onto it. My reasoning being that I loved Sherlock and the Christmas Demon and fully expected a talented writer would be able to give Lovecraft’s ideas the treatment they deserved.The basis of this trilogy is that most everything we thought we knew about Dr Watson’s works based on Sherlock’s cases are lies. This series shows how major characters were ‘really’ introduced. After all, he couldn’t very well tell the public about the cosmic horrors lurking in and around their great nation, could he?The book itself starts off with a foreword by the author (which is worth reading as it adds to the story in its own little way) and a bit from Dr Watson himself as he sits down in his old age to recount the tales he thought he would be taking to his grave. The parts where Dr Watson is an old man are charming in their own way and add a nice little dimension onto the novel.The Shadwell Shadows shows us a very different set of circumstances that led to Dr Watson’s origin in the army and his subsequent return home. It also shows us a different meeting between he and Sherlock (not to mention many other major players in the Sherlock universe). Said major players being involved really add to the world Lovegrove is creating and make it feel like a Conan-Doyle novel due to their presence. Even though certain characters like Mrs Hudson and Lestrade are not huge parts of the novel. Simply their being there just adds layers that need to be there.It starts off very Conan-Doyle-esque and takes a little while to stray from good old-fashioned Sherlock into full on Lovecraft Cosmic Horror. I’ll admit that when it does go full cosmic horror, I found it hard to suspend my disbelief at times. I am used to Sherlock looking down at a man who believes in ghosts as though he was a simpleton. To have the great consulting detective readily leap into the murky waters of the supernatural and accept it as readily as their air he breathes was a bit strange for me. It is why having those underlying characters adding those Doyle-esque layers helps so much. As a reader it kind of helped to anchor me in the Holmes universe. Otherwise it might have been easy to stray away and think I was reading something entirely different.Lovecraft’s pacing is just what you’d expect from a Holmes novel and Dr Watson is written just as fans of Conan Doyle’s original classics would remember. As I mentioned above, the cosmic horror aspect of it did make it hard to suspend my disbelief at times but, overall, I really enjoyed this book and I will be carrying on with the others at some point. The way it ended had me curious about how things would pan out going forward so I’m looking forward to discovering what comes next.I will say, however, that if you love Holmes but are not a fan of cosmic horror or the supernatural in general, this probably isn’t the book for you as there is very little traditional Holmes in this as far as case subject matter goes. Otherwise, those with a more open mind will find this a nice little jaunt through a world they loved … and then a strange trip through a world they never knew existed.

Because that’s almost entirely what the villain does. It’s almost Bond-ish how he monologues. Let your brain sit back and relax, because there’s hardly anything Sherlock needs to figure out, much less us hapless readers, when a certain criminal mastermind is so willing to reveal everything over a glass of sherry and some mild bondage.The marriage of the worlds of Sherlock Holmes and HP Lovecraft’s Cthulhu mythos is treated more like a complete retcon of the former and a force-feeding of the latter. I’d rather read A Study in Emerald by Neil Gaiman a hundred times than this.

It's a great yarn and holds interest throughout.There are the odd moments when the language feels a tad off but , on the whole Holmes and Watson are exactly as you'd expect them to be.My only niggle, and it's a personal one, is that I take a bit of umbrage when authors re-write canon to serve their story. I've read stories where it transpires that Holmes was a woman in disguise or Holmes and Moriarty were in fact clones from the future, these passed muster because they never re-wrote Conan Doyle's canon to suit their ends. But that's a personal thing, as I say, and others may feel I should get a life !!

An excellent novel written in the form of the 'true' story of Sherlock Holmes. The style is very appropriate for an account which Dr Watson is alleged to have written (the original Conan Doyle novels are extremely stuffy in places and this is replicated quite well) and the general story fits in really well with the Cthulhu mythos. I particularly enjoy the references to the 'faked' previously published accounts and how we find out what really happened in this book. A particularly good example is the introduction of Watson and Holmes via Stamford and the subsequent implied explanation about why Stamford was never mentioned again in the previously published accounts. I suspect that both Lovecraft and Conan Doyle would have approved of this novel.

There have been many meldings of Sherlock Holmes' adventures with Lovecraft's multiverse but few have been as polished and enjoyable as this. Mr Lovegrove's mixture of the two canons makes for a convincing and seamless combination of classic Victorian detective fiction with Lovecraft's visions of cosmic terror. The two combine in an enjoyable adventure that rolls along at breakneck speed and pulls the reader along with it. I can't wait for the next instalment!