Deducifying on the Range: Reviewing "Dear Mr. Holmes" by Steve Hockensmith

The Dear Mr. Holmes collection of "Holmes on the Range" stories are about two cow-punching brothers who read Watson's stories about Sherlock Holmes and then use similar deductive techniques to solve mysteries in the Old West. More correctly Old Red solves the mysteries a la Holmes and Big Red writes the stories up a la Watson. Author Steve Hockensmith says in the introduction that he was trying to think of a way to write Holmesian stories in an unusual way when his wife asked him to go hiking. He realized that the Old West and Victorian England were contemporaneous and the setting for these humorous mysteries was born.

I first encountered Old Red and Big Red on the Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine podcast where "Dear Dr. Watson" was episode 5. I was immediately taken by this delightful duo, their cowboy lives, and the mystery they solved. Naturally, when I saw Steve Hockensmith offering a free Kindle file for bloggers to review, I snapped it up. These stories didn't disappoint. The settings follow Old Red and Big Red through the varying fortunes typical for cowboys of that time. The mysteries were varied and interesting. Although I was able to solve a couple of them myself, that didn't detract from my enjoyment as a good portion of the stories' value is the characters and environment. There weren't many anachronisms that I could spot, although I believe that "rolling your eyes" is a modern facial expression and even if isn't it would have been described differently back then.

Altogether this was a delightful collection and I highly recommend it.