There are several "completions" around of Charles Dickens' unfinished The Mystery of Edwin Drood, perhaps the best known being that by Leon Garfield, and then there have been various novels that have used the surviving text as springboard for something else, such as Dan Simmons's impressive Drood and, my favourite, The D. Case; or The Truth about The Mystery of Edwin Drood by Carlo Fruttero and Franco Lucentini. Peter Rowland's novel uses a cunning and just allowable plot device to give Sherlock Holmes and John Watson MD the opportunity to solve the mystery -- which, of course, they do. I liked the style of this book quite a lot -- Rowland certainly caught Doyle's voice -- and I very much liked the tale . . . for the most part. My only irritations were towards the end, with the brief introduction of the supernatural (although, of course, this is perfectly in keeping with Doyle's own abject gullibility when confronted by the "psychic") and an explanation of Dick Datchery's role in the original that was clever and witty but out of place, being metafictional in what is otherwise a piece of straightforward telling. Overall, though, this was lots of fun -- and the ideal book to put by the bedside in the spare room! ( )

Sherlock Holmes receives a visit from John Jasper, asking that he investigate the disappearance of his nephew Edwin Drood. Preliminary investigation shows that Jasper has escaped from an asylum, and that the disappearance in question actually happened 25 years before. Rowland does a great job of having Holmes and Watson "solve" the mystery, and even having read Dickens' unfinished work, I thoroughly enjoyed how Rowland pulled it off. A great read! ( )