The Serpent Under by Bonnie Macbird

 

The Serpent Under by Bonnie Macbird

The Serpent Under is another of the multitude of titles offered as knockoffs of the exploits of the world’s most famous detective—Sherlock Holmes. They have been appearing regularly ever since the original Arthur Conan Doyle copyrights expired.

In this adventure of Holmes and Watson, Bonnie Macbird, a transplant from California who now lives in London, takes on murder, snakes, and gypsies. A wealthy young royal retainer named Jane Wandley has been found strangled in Windsor Palace. Her face has been garishly tattooed with a snake swallowing his own tail. Holmes is summoned to the palace to investigate. The back story takes us into a fatal fire on the woman’s father’s estate that killed a Gypsy woman and her child. There are suspects and additional bodies aplenty as the story unfolds.   Holmes and Watson do their best to identify the killer in the face of an impatient Queen, bombs, suffragettes, and a deadly King Cobra.

Macbird sticks to the Victorian period for her setting and does a good job of parodying the Holmesian style of questioning to deduce and then confront the miscreant. She knows her London streets and weather and evokes the Victorian atmosphere with competence.

This is a pleasant read if you have run out of the original stories and novels.

I give it a 4 out of 5