Hello one and all. The time has come for the season of ghouls and ghosts and horrific monstrosities to join us once again. Now how should I start the season this year? Perhaps with something of a curiosity and a bit of light-hearted mystery fun. 

James Patterson is an extremely bountiful author with many books either solely written or co-written by him including the Alex Cross series, the Women’s Murder Club series and The President Is Missing co-written with former U.S President Bill Clinton just to name some well-known examples.

Holmes, Margaret And Poe is the first book in another of those series, co-written by Brian Sitts. Sitts is a fellow author and ‘award winning advertising creative director and television writer’ who – despite my best efforts – I could find next to no information on whatsoever apart from his collaborations with Patterson. 

The book is very entertaining (despite some of the topics addressed or events depicted) with a fun vibe and plenty of playful winks and nods – very much intentional in most cases – to the character’s namesakes. Of the three, Marple is definitely the mother hen of the group, reading others well by body language and calling in many favours to solve her cases and do her bit for the group while she relaxes with a sherry. In comparison Holmes feels like the one of the three who is closest to his original model, with the interesting addition of being hyperosmiac – possessing an extremely acute sense of smell. Lastly Poe is something of a daredevil with a love of fast cars and almost a Bruce Wayne styled playboy front, keeping him from the very thing he wants most of all.

Holmes, Margaret and Poe is a fast-paced listen and read with a humorous side to it in much of the writing regardless of if it comes from Patterson or Sitts. Regardless of if the listener is following one of the three main stars, the NYPD officer Helene Gray who becomes entangled in their web, or in some cases the clients who hired the trio it practically flies by. I listened to the entire thing in a day! All you’d be missing is for the group to have a classic style flower power van and for their occasional canine partner to talk and you would have hit the mystery solver jackpot!

On the other hand, this is a review of the audiobook and my readers will notice I haven’t addressed the audio side of the equation just yet. The audiobook is an odd duck for the fact we have FOUR separate narrators namely Ms Charlotte Richie, Jared Zeus, Laurence Bouvard and Rashad Stone. They do not each play one of the main trio and a relevant side character as I think you might naturally assume but alternate chapters throughout the book. 

This is something you get used to quite easily once you are in the book’s flow but initially can cause some confusion as some narrators pronounce some names, places and general terms differently to others throughout the book. This makes it clear that there most likely wasn’t a pronunciation guide produced for the narrators when doing the recording for any unusual terms or special names as is sometimes the case with audiobooks. The narration throughout the book is quite enjoyable with Ms Charlotte Richie’s narration being especially on point for Margaret Marple’s character during the adventure. All four narrators do a decent job overall, matching the tone warranted by the text and at points making it feel like an entertainingly over the top American crime drama in the best way possible. 

The book isn’t trying to be high art. It is trying to be fun. An entertaining crime drama in the vein of most American mystery solver media that has a handful of aspects that feel Castle like in their construction for anyone who remembers the better parts of that series.

In conclusion the book is genuinely fun. The references to classic mysteries are entertaining as are the various tropes that are leaned into for the sake of a fast-paced mystery or in this case quite a few. I could quite easily see this being adapted into a TV format and surviving the transition well. It is a worthwhile read or listen especially for those who enjoy mysteries of a sort over Halloween but aren’t especially keen on blood, guts, and gore even during the season of fear. I hope some of you may give it a shot – even if only out of curiosity like myself – because I had a lot of fun with this and I hope the second book – Holmes Is Missing – proves to be worth the wait. 

Now the only question is how will I continue during this month of chills and terror? We’ll have to see I suppose, won’t we?