The Three Locks: Book 4 (A Sherlock Holmes Adventure)

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As a fan of Conan Doyle's famous detective and Victorian London in general, I really enjoyed this book.I thought the touches of how Holmes treat the women in this book refreshing and so like him. The twists and turns of the two cases and the bumbling police make it feel a continuance of Conan Doyle's work. That good Italian restaurants existed at this time in London is undisputed. One in Soho is described in The Dictionary of Victorian London as: "Here osso-buco, and minestrone and spaghetti were to be found as undiluted as at Savini's in Milan, and washed down with such productions of the vine as Chianti, Lacrima Christi, and Capri."

One might expect that the still youthful (35) Watson and his card-playing cronies would to prefer holiday at the more fashionable and cooler seaside resorts such as Brighton or Bristol rather than Bath, a more staid and traditional spa getaway. He must have gone for the games. There are car parks, trails, toilets and picnic spots along the way. Toilets with accessible facilities can be found at Loch Drunkie car park. The toilets are burn fed and as such, can take some time to refill when there is high usage. Note: the below will contain minimal spoilers - I have avoided referencing entire plots or naming characters, but do talk about both in vaguer terms. There are now a number of Catholic churches in the Cambridge area, and Google Maps reveals the following in the present day: So Borelli — a successful stage musician who thinks he’s God’s gift to the stage — decides to kill his rival, frame his wife, and FAKE HIS OWN DEATH? Huh? Why would he do that? It seems far more likely that the whole endeavor was set up by his wife, yet Holmes buys her flimsy story without question. THEN, once he realizes later that Dario did not run off with the Opera singer, thus confirming the wife did in fact kill Dario — along with at least two other people — his reaction is essentially, “Women: can’t live with ‘em, pass the beer nuts.” Like, this woman is a serial killer! But, hey, not my problem?

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The average depth is about 1.25 metres in the boat channel although some stretches are deeper with the marginal shelves being considerably shallower. The author has such a wonderful way with descriptive prose and the plot arc is very well controlled and the story itself is engaging and compelling. I stayed up way too late reading this one. The climax, denouement, and resolution are deftly handled. I really couldn't find any problems with any parts of the story or continuity. I was on tenterhooks as the pair raced between cases in an attempt to save more than one life. There are plenty of twists and turns that keep you on the edge of your seat. It’s addictive reading, I was hooked and couldn’t put it down until I knew everything!

I enjoy this series and I generally enjoyed this book. The author’s pastiche is well-written and appropriately reverential. That said, there are some bonkers ridiculous plot twists in this one that I’d like to point out. An object is frequently not seen, from not knowing how to see it, rather than from any defect of the organ of vision.” – Charles Babbage. Many Victorian ladies carried a “reticule”, an often beaded, sometimes fringed purse with a drawstring opening or sometimes a metal clasp. Although they were typically smallish, they ranged in size from very tiny, perhaps for a handkerchief, to quite large. Madame Borelli’s had to be large enough to carry her gruesome evidence for Holmes’s inspection. Perhaps it matches one of those in this illustration: Here is a Youtube video of three sisters singing the Canon, eventually joined by more. You can hear how the contrapuntal lines easily lend themselves to voice:

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This beloved composition was originally written in 1680 for three strings and continuo, and while most often played orchestrally, it can be sung. Although it was not well-known in Holmes's time, you've doubtless heard it at weddings, and the joke is that the bass line is hated by cellists everywhere as it simply repeats...and repeats...and repeats. Below is a ring which wraps around the finger, culminating in two stones—a "toi et moi" ring from 1885, close to the time of this tale.

One can avoid such scarring, with care. A ridiculously detailed video on arm guards can be found at this link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?app=desktop&v=SwYM0A14C_kWhile Beretta is one of the oldest gun-making firms in the world, Madame Borelli’s pistol in this scene could not have been one. The company began manufacturing its first semi-automatic pistol thirty years later, in 1915, similar to the one pictured below: This is what was sitting on Holmes’s chemistry table. The Ruhmkorff coil is an early transformer which uses a low voltage direct current to produce high voltage pulses. This technology, in development at the time of this adventure, eventually led to neon lights and x-rays. The glass tubing is a Geissler tube, the precursor to the neon bulb. Different gases would produce different-coloured glowing lights. The first efforts to use artificial light for photography employed phenomenally dangerous oxy-hydrogen light. This was a lump of calcium carbonate, ignited by an oxygen flame. The technique was also used in stage lighting, where it was called "limelight." If you remember, limelight is featured in the "Chat Noir" chapter of Art in the Blood. It was very bright, was difficult to regulate, and tended to overexpose the faces nearest the camera. By the time of our adventure, still photographers used various combinations of magnesium and other elements to create "flash powders", which were ignited using a continuously developing series of mechanisms, some of which were connected to triggers. Even these were dangerous, and could ignite accidentally, possibly killing the photographer. A man named Traill Taylor is credited with first using magnesium flash powder as the sole light source for still photographs. E.A. Kenyon followed this in 1883 with another, similar formula, but the amount of smoke it created made it a challenge in indoor settings. The story is filled with colorful, memorable characters. The atmosphere of the year, with the oppressive heat, is excellent as well. The writing is reminiscent of Doyle's work, as I mentioned before. My only concern would be that I didn't realize that this is the fourth in a series. There are details that obviously come from earlier books that influence choices, such as Watson's mother drowning, and that Watson had a twin sister, Rose, who...also drowned. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it was unexpected.

Despite their common goal of providing higher education for women, Girton and Newnham were quite different from each other. Newnham started as a house for five students in 1871, and its administrators encouraged students to study “traditional female subjects” such as English, Literature, and History. They very much did not encourage them to compete with men. Girton, founded in 1869 by Emily Davies and Barbara Boudichon, was a residential college with leaders who intended to achieve the same status as the universities, and to bestow university degrees. They were immediately denounced in the Quarterly Review by Oxford history professor Montagu Burrows: “The one thing men do not like is the man-woman, and they will never believe the College or University woman is not that type.” Obviously he was mistaken, and you can trace the rise of women at Cambridge here: https://www.cam.ac.uk/TheRisingTide If Lamb — who was barely described other than a few gay digs — hadn’t stumbled into the deacon’s room during that very narrow window that one night, everything would’ve worked out fine. So what did Holmes & Watson do? Aside from solve a murder of opportunity and passion that was mostly unrelated to the story, not much. All that preamble? Meant absolutely nothing towards the conclusion. In the end, all of this equated to a big let-down in terms of Holmes doing Holmsey things to get his man. Cambridge had opened its doors to Catholics in 1871 but the “Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith” felt it would be a “mortal sin” for Catholics to attend, because of the influences of liberalism and scepticism prevalent in the teaching at both Oxford and Cambridge. Wealthier Catholics, wishing their sons (sadly, both universities only admitted males) to obtain the intellectual and social benefits of an Oxbridge education, objected loudly. The ban was lifted in 1895, but only provided a Catholic chaplaincy was established. The one in Cambridge was founded in 1896, well after the time of this story, and is called Fisher House. At this time, it was common practice to induce sleep in infants with "soothers"—many of which contained laudanum, a strong and addictive depressant. These soothers were available everywhere without a prescription, and heavily marketed.

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Were there wedding planners in Holmes’s day? Well, if Holmes says so, there must have been! Fortunately, research bears this out. Weddings before the nineteenth century were often small, private family affairs but during the 1800's, they took on a grander scale,particularly among the upper classes, approaching the splashy events of modern times. One can find many descriptions of complicated floral arrangements in contemporary accounts. In “A History and Analysis of Weddings and Wedding Planning,” Claire Finnell, of Johnson and Wales University, states: Also you are always introduced to female characters that the author would have us believe that they have bested Holmes. This is no different. Whilst I can appreciate there must always be good characters and these would be. The late Victorian era is sometimes called the "Golden Era of Magic". You can find a fabulous collection of posters of the era here: https://guides.slv.vic.gov.au/magic The book that indicates (along with other things) Colangelo’s hypochondria to Holmes was a staple household possession for families in America, but perhaps less so for a single man in England, especially one bookmarked in a dozen places. Thanks to the passion for “Orientalism”, these tables were all the rage in Victorian sitting rooms during the last two decades of the 19th century. You’ll see them in nearly every Holmes representation on film. There would very naturally have been one at 221B. Here’s a very fine example, offered by FirstDibs at an exorbitant price.