A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin

Reviewed by Jeanne

Sherlock Holmes seems to be everywhere these days.  Two TV series, one American and one British, feature modern versions of the great sleuth and both are successful.  Movies continue to be made, the most recent series of films featuring Robert Downey, Jr. as Holmes.  One would think that a character created back in 1887 would have worn out his welcome by now, but people keep molding him in slightly new images to suit the times.

To add to this present bounty of Sherlocks, I read recently that Sir Ian MacKellen will play the Great Detective in a movie based on the book A Slight Trick of the Mind by Mitch Cullin.  I’ve read a number of Sherlock pastiches but had not read this one, so I decided to give it a try.

It’s 1947 and a ninety-three year old Sherlock has retired to the county to keep bees.  He is a shadow of his former self; his mind plays tricks on him, and he loses track of both events and people and yet, he still has dazzling moments of clarity and memory.  He walks with two canes, and is looked after by a housekeeper and Roger, her young son, who has taken an interest in bees as well.  He still receives inquiries from all over the world, dismissing most, but occasionally taking an interest in a letter—mostly those to do with bees and royal jelly, not cases to be solved.  He has recently taken a trip to post-war Japan on one such errand, but is having some trouble recalling the details.  Meanwhile, Roger has come across an account of a case Holmes dealt with years before, but that account is woefully incomplete.  It involves a woman who captured Holmes’ imagination, though he can’t quite say why and the boy hopes that some day he will learn what happened.

Time moves back and forth in this beautifully written novel, with Sherlock recalling times long past while being unable to hang on to some parts of the present.  There are at least three main story threads, involving Roger who obviously worships Holmes, the long ago lady whose husband was sure she was involved in something untoward, and the Japanese gentleman who has an ulterior motive for contacting Holmes.  Sherlock’s observations, weariness, and meditations make for a fully realized character, someone quite different from the occasional one-dimensional versions of the character.

This is much more a literary novel than most Sherlock stories; in fact, it would have succeeded if the author had chosen the beekeeper to be someone other than Holmes, but using Sherlock does give the book an added poignancy.  The sections set in Japan after the Bomb are particularly memorable; again, not quite what I would have expected.  I’d recommend this to anyone who likes a well-written novel, but one in which not all answers are revealed.  If you’re a thriller or mystery fan, this might not be your cup of tea. And yes, I enjoyed it, though I do admit all the time-shifting sometimes made me pause and try to reorient my thoughts. The title is very well chosen, I think.

And I'll be really interested to see how they film this! Ian MacKellen should make quite a fascinating Holmes.