Just Reviewed Osborn’s First Two “Displaced Detective” Novels at SBR

Tonight’s new review at Shiny Book Review is for Stephanie Osborn’s first two books in her Displaced Detective series about Sherlock Holmes as brought into the modern day via modern physics.  These are fun reads, but more to the point, they’re faithful to the spirit of Holmes in milieu and mythos.  Osborn came up with a great way to start her series by using modern-day physics along with the “World as Myth” concept as delineated by Robert A. Heinlein; the two together explain how Holmes could be a real person, and then how it came to be that Osborn’s hyperspatial physicist, Skye Chadwick, was able to rescue Holmes before he ended up dead at Reichenbach Falls.

These are really fun reads that make good sense in context.  The mysteries Holmes solves are appropriately complex (yes, I said that at SBR, too, but it’s a phrase I don’t get to use much, thus the repetition), Holmes’s abilities seem realistic (for him), and the halting romance that grows between Holmes and Chadwick is worth the price of admission all by itself.

But do expect there to be a romance, especially in the second book, and do expect it to be PG-13.  This makes sense in context, and it’s something I applauded in my review — but some Holmes-o-philes may not wish to see their hero in love.  (If so, the more fool, they.  Osborn does a great job showing how these two extremely brilliant people could and did fall in love, and it works, plot-wise.  To great effect.)

Seriously.  Go read my review of these two fine books, THE CASE OF THE DISPLACED DETECTIVE: THE ARRIVAL and THE CASE OF THE DISPLACED DETECTIVE: AT SPEED.  Then go buy the books already.