The Italian Secretary

I bought this on impulse at Sans Bookstore at Funan Centre on Saturday night and read it on Sunday. I am almost always partial to Sherlock Holmes stories. This new one by Caleb Carr, a contributing editor of Military History Quarterly, is rather long-winded. Watson huffed and puffed throughout, moralising on every issue and was extremely contemptuous and critical of his companion. In other words, the narration is very tiresome and tedious. The plot is much ado over very little despite the hyperbole in the beginning of the narration. Watson and Holmes come across as extremely 'unlikeable' people.

At the end of the novel, it is revealed that Carr had originally meant to write a Holmes short story for a collection and had expanded it greatly when he found that he could not resist writing more. This is a very bad case of literary bloat and if an editor had trimmed it down to the length of a short story, then, perhaps...

"You Think you know Her
But you never really
Lived a life without her
Couldn't tell me
The things she said
The books she read
The way she walked when the morning came
The time of night that you held her tight
But you'll never forget the day she'll ran away"
'You think you know her' Cause and Effect