Weirdly filled with inaccuracies (there would not have been a lift in that building in that year), and odd ticks by the characters, which continued to throw me out of the story.

Good for the occasional reader of Sherlock Holmes and related things - not for the person who is a fan of the canon.

There are many pastiches and spin offs featuring the world’s greatest detective, though nothing quite like this, with Sherlock being a minor player of pompous nature, while the much beleagued and made fun of in the books Inspector Lestrade takes the center stage. And that’s the premise and the main gimmick of this book, the first in series, featuring the memorably named Sholto Lestrade as an intrepid crime solver in his own right. The main thing with that is that while Sherlock is a genius, Lestrade is a mere man, so he plods diligently and methodically, lacking panache and pizazz of deductive method and spectacular powers of observation. And so it takes him quite a while to find the serial killer terrorizing London in 1891, all too soon after the Ripper case. And so as a murder mystery it’s a pretty standard serial killer story, murders occur according to child cautionary rhymes and the ending twist is a doozy, not to mention exceptionally progressive for the times. But as a work of fiction it’s a delight, the way the author disposes with Sherlock alone is worth the entire read. But then there’s the use of real life historical figures, woven in pretty cleverly. And it’s surprisingly funny, at times almost laugh out loud so. Made the entire read very…charming. Mind you, there’s plenty of murder and suspense for genre fans, but for me it was all the bonus extras that made the book. Lestrade is the proverbial straight man who isn’t in on the joke, he isn’t well read, he’s terribly serious (although not at all humorless), he’s very dedicated to his job. Not world’s greatest, not even close, but a respectable leading man doing a credible, if not extraordinary, job. This book’s characterization of his doesn’t exactly make one go…oh wow, time to rethink the (fictional) historical accounts, but it’s a clever and interesting twist. The twist that outshines its subject, actually. Thanks Netgalley.