Sherlock Holmes Mystery Novel: The House of Silk

loretta arlene duemler: I was a voracious A. Conan Doyle reader when I was younger. Somewhere about 1/2 way through realized I had already read this in the past. Really enjoyed it for the second time :)

United States on Dec 03, 2023

Daud A.: Liked the storyline. It was like the remix version of Holmes. Good suspense and thrill. A little darker version of the adventures of our favorite detective. Would read more from Mr. Horowitz.

India on Nov 10, 2023

RR Waller: NO SPOILERS

I have read all Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes stories and am, as a result, very familiar with Dr Watson’s style. Horowitz has captured this very well in his homage to Doyle. A master story teller and detective writer, Horowitz develops a complex, exciting tale with a host of Holmes’ characters.

Highly recommended.

United Kingdom on Oct 08, 2023

Blue and white: If I hadn't known beforehand that this book had been written by Anthony Horowitz, I would definitely have said that it been penned by Arthur Conan Doyle. I haven't read a SH story in a quite a few years, and this one has put me in the mood to re-read my favourites. All Sherlock's usual cohorts are in it, plus of course the murdered and the murderers. All the excitement is there in an exceptionally cold London winter, then to Boston and a whole lot more. Moriarty is next on my list.

United Kingdom on Sep 24, 2023

boswell57: When you start reading The House of Silk, it really does seem as if Conan Doyle had written it: the tone and style are brilliantly captured. Horowitz cites Dickens, Gissing and Mayhew amongst other sources for help with the atmosphere of nineteenth century London, which he makes convincing. The House of Silk is being finally recorded during the First World War. Dr Watson is a very old man in some sort of care home. Holmes had died the year before. Watson loves to reminisce and ‘the nurses’ tell him that writing is therapeutic, so he decides to set down this story, with some provisos. He says that the story has not been told before because it is ‘too monstrous, too shocking to appear in print.’ Once written, he will arrange for it to be safely deposited, with instructions that the manuscript should not be opened for 100 years. ‘perhaps future readers will be more inured to scandal and corruption than my own would have been. To them I bequeath one last portrait of Mr Sherlock Holmes, and a perspective that has not been seen before.’

However inured we modern day readers may be to scandal and corruption, the truth about the House of Silk will still shock, if not...

United Kingdom on Feb 07, 2023

Mysti: The House of Silk by Anthony Horowitz is a novel that takes the Holmes and Watson characters originally written by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and adds another story to the ever growing list of adaptations. Horowitz was one of the first authors to be officially endorsed by the Conan Doyle Estate, and not only uses the same characters but tries to emulate Doyle’s style as well. The novel begins with Holmes and Watson having a conversation with Edmund Carstairs, a middle-class man who believes someone has followed him back from America to torture and kill him. The case takes a turn when Ross a homeless boy that Holmes employs, is murdered as well as the discovery of the House of Silk, a secret society which seemingly operates at the highest levels of government. Throughout this narrative, poverty is intertwined into almost every scene and action. I believe that Anthony Horowitz successfully portrays the poverty plaguing the streets of Victorian London as well as emulates Doyle’s style, but he falls flat when faced with the cast of characters.
For Horowitz, in his novel, poverty comes in two parts. The first part is how he represents the lower classes and poverty stricken being...

United States on Mar 24, 2017

marjorie mallon: Antony Horowitz is without a doubt an excellent crime writer, one just has to look at his writing resume to see that. But moreover, he has an obvious love of Conan Doyle’s original stories. The House of Silk is a novel devoted to an accurate portrayal of Sherlock Holmes, Horowitz’s enthusiasm shines through, in a voice that speaks with great fluidity. In fact I’m quoting him here from his conception, inspiration and the ten rules of writing The House of Silk: “When I was asked to write the House of Silk, I realised that this would be the key. I had to become invisible. I had to find that extraordinary, authentic voice.” Well, in my opinion Horowitz does that and more, he invisibly keeps the fun factor in Sherlock, keeping us quietly smiling all the way through.

I loved reading crime novels as a teenager and reading The House of Silk seems to have taken me back to my teenage self, and my love of this genre. I was a huge fan of Raymond Chandler, and Agatha Christie, so it takes no Sherlock deduction to know that this love has been well and truly rekindled!

The House of Silk is told from the perspective of Sherlock’s trusted friend Dr. Watson. An air of...

United Kingdom on Feb 09, 2015

Gavin B.: In 1893, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle retired his much beloved fictional detective Sherlock Holmes by plunging him over the edge of the Reichenbach Falls as he was locked in mortal combat with his nemesis Professor Moriarty. By popular demand, Doyle revived the Holmes character ten years later with the somewhat puzzling explanation that only the evil Moriarty was actually killed. Doyle continued to write Sherlock Holmes stories for another 24 years and his last Holmes mystery was published three years before his death in 1930. Doyle tried hard to distance himself from his Holmes creation to write "serious" literature and ironically 80 years after his death, the Sherlock Holmes mysteries turn out to be Doyle's sole ticket to literary immortality.

In those 81 years since Doyle's death, Doyle's family estate never commissioned any other author to write another Sherlock Holmes adventure until Anthony Horowitz was given the official nod to write "The House of Silk", in 2010. If Doyle's descendants revived Holmes out of dire financial circumstances, Horowitz's riveting "The House of Silk" does not suggest any sort of fast buck motivation on the part of the Doyle estate or Mr. Horowitz....

United States on Nov 12, 2011