The Last Sherlock Holmes Story: Stage 3 (Oxford Bookworms Library, Crime & Mystery) | 
 enlarge | Author: Michael Dibdin
Publisher: Oxford Univ Pr (Sd)
Category: Book
List Price: $6.50
Buy New: $6.40
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Avg. Customer Rating:  49 reviews
Sales Rank: 560469
Media: Paperback
Pages: 72
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.9
Dimensions (in): 7.7 x 4.9 x 0.1
ISBN: 0194791211
Dewey Decimal Number: 428.6
EAN: 9780194791212
ASIN: 0194791211
Publication Date: March 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Condition: BRAND NEW and IN STOCK - dispatched within 48 hours from the US
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Product Description
For fifty years after Dr Watson's death, a packet of papers, written by the doctor himself, lay hidden in a locked box. The papers contained an extraordinary report of the case of Jack the Ripper and the horrible murders in the East End of London in 1888. The detective, of course, was the great Sherlock Holmes - but why was the report kept hidden for so long? This is the story that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle never wrote. It is a strange and frightening tale . . .
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| Customer Reviews: Read 44 more reviews...
 Holmes a murderer - please? April 21, 2008
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
This certainly does not encourage me to read other tomes by Michael Dibdin. The story as imagined does nothing to enhance the Holmes legend and only perverts. It takes the character's flaws that make him human in Doyle's works and makes poor old Holmes an inhuman monster. Take any well known fictional character and alter the characteristics we love best and you no longer have the character. In essence this is what Dibdin did which ultimately makes the story an exercise of the authors wit or lack thereof and not about the character we have grown to love.
 Ripped from the same cloth January 15, 2008
Adding to the subgenera of Holmes vs. the Ripper, Michael Didbin weighs in with the most controversial and shocking Ripper/Holmes tale of all. I will not give any spoilers away, but SH purists will probable take offence to the relationship between Holmes and his ach nemesis Moriarty. If you can approach this book as a stand-alone mystery by a talented author intent on taking the character of Sherlock Holmes into a dark and uncharted territory and enjoy mystery fiction like The Crime Doctor, or Sherlock Holmes vs. Dracula: The Adventure of the Sanguinary Count,then I am certain that this thrilling novel will provided you with quite a few lively nights of suspenseful reading.
 Fallen Angel! April 2, 2006
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
Reviewing this work in itself is going to be a spoiler for future readers, so let me keep my posting as succint as possible:
1. It is one of the finest pastiches that I have come across, with an element of honesty that tends to envelope you.
2. It is a very painful work that saddens you to an extent that I considered impossible, before reading this work.
3. Read it, but don't lose faith. If the Church can survive the entire gamut of conspiracy theories, we can also survive.
The world's greatest detective vs. Jack the Ripper January 2, 2006
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
What would have happened if Sherlock Holmes had tried to catch Jack the Ripper? This interesting premise forms the basis for this book, and leads to a surprising and alarming conclusion. In keeping with Doyle's style, this book is written from Dr. Watson's point of view, and draws the reader into the narrative as well as the best of the original Holmes stories. The characters ring true, and the story is full of surprises and unexpected twists, making this a worthy addition to the body of work about the great detective.
Shocking and interesting September 26, 2005
2 out of 4 found this review helpful
There is a long and honoured tradition among mystery writers and fans of the Sherlock Holmes tales of writing one's own mystery. This can take one of several starting points - to take a detail in the canonical stories and develop it more fully (there are a lot of dangling pieces in there), to take the characters of Holmes and Watson (and perhaps others) and involve them in completely new fictional scenarios, or, as author Michael Dibdin does here, involve the characters in actual historical events. Dibdin is not the first to pit Holmes against the murderer of Whitechapel, whom history has come to know as 'Jack the Ripper'. Indeed, if there was one case upon which the Holmesian skill was needed in London a hundred years ago, it was that case, still unsolved by the authorities.
Dibdin, however, does a twist to this. Holmes is involved in solving the case, but even he cannot do it. This, we discover in the course of things, is because of a very dark secret indeed. Holmes is known from the canonical stories to be a cocaine addict, a seven-percent solution being his favoured dose. Dibdin set the premise that this has caused Holmes to have a split personality, and that his nemesis Moriarty is in fact Holmes himself. This is an overlay of the idea of Dr. Jeckyll and Mr. Hyde, a story contemporary with Conan Doyle's canon, and also one involving drug transformation.
This is a story for the true Holmes fan. As another reviewer has commented, those who are not intimately familiar with the Holmesian canon are likely going to be lost in many of the details and get a vastly distorted picture both of the detective and his arch-enemy. This is a flight of pure fancy, a 'what if?' very well crafted and executed, but rather far from what the traditional Holmesian and Sherlockian followers will accept.
Dibdin does write in an engaging style, and sets this up as a Watsonian narrative buried for a period to permit the Holmes legend to rest secure before being savaged. Of course, that legend is secure, as countless pastiches that have warped Holmes into every conceivable type of person and placed him in ever more diverse setting have been unable to shake - indeed, their continued production only serves to solidify that prominence. Dibdin's contribution is a welcome, if shocking, contribution to this body of work.
Few who read it will ever forget it.
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