Types on your eyeballs with a hot needle, 08 Nov 2008
Unlike the first three of the London Books (forgotten) Classics series I had never heard of Robert Westerby or this book Wide Boys Never Work. Westerby it seems started life as a gritty London author of street literature who finished up screenwriting for Uncle Walt in California. He wrote this story of a disaffected provincial factory worker getting wrapped up with a seedy London crime gang at a ridiclously young age and as Iain Sinclair who wrote the quirky intro and end notes he 'types on your eyeballs with a hot needle'. It's good. Westerby was an angry young man when the accepted angry young men were angry young babies.

Types on your eyeballs with a hot needle, 08 Nov 2008
Unlike the first three of the London Books (forgotten) Classics series I had never heard of Robert Westerby or this book Wide Boys Never Work. Westerby it seems started life as a gritty London author of street literature who finished up screenwriting for Uncle Walt in California. He wrote this story of a disaffected provincial factory worker getting wrapped up with a seedy London crime gang at a ridiclously young age and as Iain Sinclair who wrote the quirky intro and end notes he 'types on your eyeballs with a hot needle'. It's good. Westerby was an angry young man when the accepted angry young men were angry young babies.

Frequently exasperating, but Sinclair's shaggy dog story has a unique dark poetry, 04 Mar 2007
When Angela Carter no less, whose own work couldn't exactly be described as conventional, is quoted on this book's back cover blurb describing it as "a great, strange [...] fiction about London that follows its own logic", well, I suppose we can't say we haven't been warned. Often more anti-novel than novel, Sinclair's relentlessly downbeat low-life tale has little in the way of plot and makes few concessions to the reader as it meanders its way through the East End of London, as polluted and silt-heavy with the weight of history as the river it describes. Fascinatingly, Sinclair himself seems well aware of the reader's likely reaction, summed up in a fictitious Editor's (self-referential) response to the novel's supposed first draft - "Who is 'I'? ....Too compressed. What slaughter? What psycopath? What nickname?". "What nickname?" goes pretty much to the root of the reader's problem: Sinclair is an inveterate and unashamed namedropper, with his text's cultural referents being too dense and numerous for any single reader to have much chance of catching them all. For example, on a randomly chosen page from the last of his twelve tales, he invokes Joe Orton (fair enough, heard of him), Douglas Bader (sorry, no), Max Roach (vaguely ... a drummer, maybe??) and Michael Sandle (sorry, really haven't the foggiest). Well, call me thick, but it's nice not to have to consult Wikipedia more than once per page. And a lot of the references are just going to be lost on those of us not privileged to live in the Capital: maybe it's because I'm not a Londoner...

So, why bother? Because when Sinclair really finds his form in these twelve murky tales, he is on fire with a dark poetry which is quite unlike anything else in recent British literature. This is particularly true of the darkest of the book's sections, "Horse Spittle" (featuring the disappearance and presumed murder of a nurse turned prostitute), "Eisenbahnangst" (with its chilling Freudian deconstruction of Tenniel's famous illustrations for Lewis Carroll's "Alice Through the Looking-Glass"), and "Prima Donna", which describes Sinclair's supposed encounter with a disturbing character who has a troubling obsession with the victims of Jack the Ripper.

The book's twelve sections essentially narrate the wanderings of a second-hand-book-seller turned writer called (yes, you guessed it) Iain Sinclair, in the ever-shifting and thoroughly unreliable riverine territory of Margaret Thatcher's London Docklands. Although many of the characters he encounters are unashamed grotesques, it is in his portrayal of society's victims (prostitutes; rent-boys; addicts; the mentally ill) that Sinclair really engages the reader's sympathy.

Parts of the book have inevitably dated (the Silvertown memorial?? - presumably topical in Thatcher's last years as Prime Minister), and Sinclair's political satire in "Art of the State" and "Isle of Doges" is unashamedly heavy-handed (though I did love the vision of Dennis Thatcher as the Cerne Giant, naked and brandishing a golf club ...). There is no doubt that this "novel", even more than most of Sinclair's books, makes very considerable demands on the reader. All the same, it's worth making this trip downriver.

All Over the Map, 21 Jan 2003
I picked up this book for a number of reasons: primarily, I was intrigued by the concept of a novel comprised of twelve stories which would reveal a gritty, dark side of London's docklands. (I'm not a Londoner, nor have I spent a great deal of time there, but I am drawn to fiction about it for some reason.) I have to admit I was also impressed with the plethora of effusive praise from the British press on the jacket. Having read the first three stories, I have now set it aside, unlikely to return to it. Why? Well, it all starts and ends with Sinclair's style. Had I known beforehand that he is a poet, I probably would have avoided the book. My experience with poets is that their prose style tends to be overly ornate. Some find this wholly delightful, but it generally leaves me deeply unmoved.

I liked the notion of what Sinclair was trying to do in tying the Thames to Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and mixing it all up with a critique of Thatcherite policies and the the capitalist assault on the underclass. He's clearly a writer with a political viewpoint who absorbs his cultural surroundings and infuse them back into his writing. Unfortunately, the connections aren't always visible, and worse, the stories aren't particularly interesting. There are flashes here and there of something, and clearly Sinclair has masses of knowledge and skill, but it's hard to find any cohesion to it all. The reviewer at The New York Times put it rather well in saying, "The book is a tremendous pillar of words, not all of them making direct sense and not trying to." It's writing one can appreciate, but not really enjoy, and since I have stacks of other unread books waiting for me, I'll put this one aside-perhaps forever.

Sinclair's Splendid Smoke Opera, 12 Jan 2002
I think Michael Moorcock coined the phrase 'Smoke Opera' to describe the raft of "London" books, both fiction and non-fiction, which have been published in the last few years and reaching some kind of culmination with that great work of fiction Ackroyd's "London: A Biography". Downriver remains my favourite Sinclair novel and I can't recommend it highly enough. If you want real substance, a sense of value which you get from a Victorian classic, with the sense of street suss you expect from the latest junkista. It's very persuasive writing. Like Mother London, you have to take the writer's authority on trust, because this isn't a standard modernist text, but it is so thoroughly rewarding, you will not regret giving him that trust. These are very substantial books indeed, likely to outlast most of their contemporaries! Downriver will run and run! Twelve interconnecting narratives. Twelve times the value of the average Martin Amis! I originally bought this because Laurie Taylor said it was the best value for money to take on holiday. He was right.

Rich and deep, 14 Jul 2001
This is the best of all the London books and could be one of the best novels of the past forty or fifty years! It is written on dozens of levels and can be reread for fresh insights, humour and general brilliance. Wonderful book. Honestly, most other stuff seems pretty thin in comparison.

This and Mother London are the best, 20 Mar 2001
I read this because I read somewhere (Evening Standard ?) that this and Mother London were the two best novels about London. Together -- and they are very different 'reads' on the city although often linked together -- they do make a monumental picture of a living, richly textured capital. Other writers never seem to get as thoroughly involved with their material as Sinclair and Moorcock who almost seem to think the city IS them. That is, where a writer like Martin Amis will really be writing about himself in some way and his responses to what he sees, Sinclair and Moorcock seem to ABSORB themselves in the city -- accepting it, lock, stock and occasionally smoking barrel -- and celebrating it. That celebratory note is what unites the books. This is not your usual wimp's response to the Terrors and Pitfalls of the Big City. This is I LIKE IT HERE, CRAP AND ALL. The mocking lyricism is another thing which sometimes echoes across both books. These are sophisticated writers, but they are writers of passion and they are both romantic writers in the best, most intelligent sense. Impatient with orthodoxy, suspicious of received ideas, they go and look at everything for themselves and bring us back their reports. You can't ask for better than that. You do get better than that, because you get some glorious writing and wonderful characters. Downriver is constructed as twelve interlocking narratives and has a rather monumental Victorian structure to it. It feels a bit like the Tower of London, too. Mother London in contrast is the Kew Tropical Plant House with shafts of light falling forever unexpectedly on things we hadn't noticed before. Downriver is also full of things we hadn't noticed before and I am now re-reading it because I am discovering more things I hadn't noticed the first time! This is a Chinese box of delights and Mother London is, if you like, an Albert Memorial of delights. Together they show that English fiction has not lost sight of a larger contextual universe while examining local life-forms. In spite of being about one specific city, they refute the impression of the modern English novel as provincial or, at best, regional in its focus. I can't recommend them too enthusiastically. Both these great books are built to last. JB

Types on your eyeballs with a hot needle, 08 Nov 2008
Unlike the first three of the London Books (forgotten) Classics series I had never heard of Robert Westerby or this book Wide Boys Never Work. Westerby it seems started life as a gritty London author of street literature who finished up screenwriting for Uncle Walt in California. He wrote this story of a disaffected provincial factory worker getting wrapped up with a seedy London crime gang at a ridiclously young age and as Iain Sinclair who wrote the quirky intro and end notes he 'types on your eyeballs with a hot needle'. It's good. Westerby was an angry young man when the accepted angry young men were angry young babies.

Frequently exasperating, but Sinclair's shaggy dog story has a unique dark poetry, 04 Mar 2007
When Angela Carter no less, whose own work couldn't exactly be described as conventional, is quoted on this book's back cover blurb describing it as "a great, strange [...] fiction about London that follows its own logic", well, I suppose we can't say we haven't been warned. Often more anti-novel than novel, Sinclair's relentlessly downbeat low-life tale has little in the way of plot and makes few concessions to the reader as it meanders its way through the East End of London, as polluted and silt-heavy with the weight of history as the river it describes. Fascinatingly, Sinclair himself seems well aware of the reader's likely reaction, summed up in a fictitious Editor's (self-referential) response to the novel's supposed first draft - "Who is 'I'? ....Too compressed. What slaughter? What psycopath? What nickname?". "What nickname?" goes pretty much to the root of the reader's problem: Sinclair is an inveterate and unashamed namedropper, with his text's cultural referents being too dense and numerous for any single reader to have much chance of catching them all. For example, on a randomly chosen page from the last of his twelve tales, he invokes Joe Orton (fair enough, heard of him), Douglas Bader (sorry, no), Max Roach (vaguely ... a drummer, maybe??) and Michael Sandle (sorry, really haven't the foggiest). Well, call me thick, but it's nice not to have to consult Wikipedia more than once per page. And a lot of the references are just going to be lost on those of us not privileged to live in the Capital: maybe it's because I'm not a Londoner...

So, why bother? Because when Sinclair really finds his form in these twelve murky tales, he is on fire with a dark poetry which is quite unlike anything else in recent British literature. This is particularly true of the darkest of the book's sections, "Horse Spittle" (featuring the disappearance and presumed murder of a nurse turned prostitute), "Eisenbahnangst" (with its chilling Freudian deconstruction of Tenniel's famous illustrations for Lewis Carroll's "Alice Through the Looking-Glass"), and "Prima Donna", which describes Sinclair's supposed encounter with a disturbing character who has a troubling obsession with the victims of Jack the Ripper.

The book's twelve sections essentially narrate the wanderings of a second-hand-book-seller turned writer called (yes, you guessed it) Iain Sinclair, in the ever-shifting and thoroughly unreliable riverine territory of Margaret Thatcher's London Docklands. Although many of the characters he encounters are unashamed grotesques, it is in his portrayal of society's victims (prostitutes; rent-boys; addicts; the mentally ill) that Sinclair really engages the reader's sympathy.

Parts of the book have inevitably dated (the Silvertown memorial?? - presumably topical in Thatcher's last years as Prime Minister), and Sinclair's political satire in "Art of the State" and "Isle of Doges" is unashamedly heavy-handed (though I did love the vision of Dennis Thatcher as the Cerne Giant, naked and brandishing a golf club ...). There is no doubt that this "novel", even more than most of Sinclair's books, makes very considerable demands on the reader. All the same, it's worth making this trip downriver.

All Over the Map, 21 Jan 2003
I picked up this book for a number of reasons: primarily, I was intrigued by the concept of a novel comprised of twelve stories which would reveal a gritty, dark side of London's docklands. (I'm not a Londoner, nor have I spent a great deal of time there, but I am drawn to fiction about it for some reason.) I have to admit I was also impressed with the plethora of effusive praise from the British press on the jacket. Having read the first three stories, I have now set it aside, unlikely to return to it. Why? Well, it all starts and ends with Sinclair's style. Had I known beforehand that he is a poet, I probably would have avoided the book. My experience with poets is that their prose style tends to be overly ornate. Some find this wholly delightful, but it generally leaves me deeply unmoved.

I liked the notion of what Sinclair was trying to do in tying the Thames to Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and mixing it all up with a critique of Thatcherite policies and the the capitalist assault on the underclass. He's clearly a writer with a political viewpoint who absorbs his cultural surroundings and infuse them back into his writing. Unfortunately, the connections aren't always visible, and worse, the stories aren't particularly interesting. There are flashes here and there of something, and clearly Sinclair has masses of knowledge and skill, but it's hard to find any cohesion to it all. The reviewer at The New York Times put it rather well in saying, "The book is a tremendous pillar of words, not all of them making direct sense and not trying to." It's writing one can appreciate, but not really enjoy, and since I have stacks of other unread books waiting for me, I'll put this one aside-perhaps forever.

Sinclair's Splendid Smoke Opera, 12 Jan 2002
I think Michael Moorcock coined the phrase 'Smoke Opera' to describe the raft of "London" books, both fiction and non-fiction, which have been published in the last few years and reaching some kind of culmination with that great work of fiction Ackroyd's "London: A Biography". Downriver remains my favourite Sinclair novel and I can't recommend it highly enough. If you want real substance, a sense of value which you get from a Victorian classic, with the sense of street suss you expect from the latest junkista. It's very persuasive writing. Like Mother London, you have to take the writer's authority on trust, because this isn't a standard modernist text, but it is so thoroughly rewarding, you will not regret giving him that trust. These are very substantial books indeed, likely to outlast most of their contemporaries! Downriver will run and run! Twelve interconnecting narratives. Twelve times the value of the average Martin Amis! I originally bought this because Laurie Taylor said it was the best value for money to take on holiday. He was right.

Rich and deep, 14 Jul 2001
This is the best of all the London books and could be one of the best novels of the past forty or fifty years! It is written on dozens of levels and can be reread for fresh insights, humour and general brilliance. Wonderful book. Honestly, most other stuff seems pretty thin in comparison.

This and Mother London are the best, 20 Mar 2001
I read this because I read somewhere (Evening Standard ?) that this and Mother London were the two best novels about London. Together -- and they are very different 'reads' on the city although often linked together -- they do make a monumental picture of a living, richly textured capital. Other writers never seem to get as thoroughly involved with their material as Sinclair and Moorcock who almost seem to think the city IS them. That is, where a writer like Martin Amis will really be writing about himself in some way and his responses to what he sees, Sinclair and Moorcock seem to ABSORB themselves in the city -- accepting it, lock, stock and occasionally smoking barrel -- and celebrating it. That celebratory note is what unites the books. This is not your usual wimp's response to the Terrors and Pitfalls of the Big City. This is I LIKE IT HERE, CRAP AND ALL. The mocking lyricism is another thing which sometimes echoes across both books. These are sophisticated writers, but they are writers of passion and they are both romantic writers in the best, most intelligent sense. Impatient with orthodoxy, suspicious of received ideas, they go and look at everything for themselves and bring us back their reports. You can't ask for better than that. You do get better than that, because you get some glorious writing and wonderful characters. Downriver is constructed as twelve interlocking narratives and has a rather monumental Victorian structure to it. It feels a bit like the Tower of London, too. Mother London in contrast is the Kew Tropical Plant House with shafts of light falling forever unexpectedly on things we hadn't noticed before. Downriver is also full of things we hadn't noticed before and I am now re-reading it because I am discovering more things I hadn't noticed the first time! This is a Chinese box of delights and Mother London is, if you like, an Albert Memorial of delights. Together they show that English fiction has not lost sight of a larger contextual universe while examining local life-forms. In spite of being about one specific city, they refute the impression of the modern English novel as provincial or, at best, regional in its focus. I can't recommend them too enthusiastically. Both these great books are built to last. JB

"From a drop of water, a logician can infer...an Atlantic or a Niagara.", 07 Dec 2006
Published in 1878, this first Sherlock Holmes story is a delightful curiosity, rather than a finely developed novel. Here Dr. Watson, just released from the British army and recovering from serious wounds from the second Afghan war, meets Sherlock Holmes for the first time. Both have been looking for someone to share the rent--at 221B Baker Street. Holmes, without a "real" career, spends considerable time experimenting in a hospital chemistry lab and interviewing people who come to the apartment. Watson soon discovers that Holmes is a detective consultant, working with police detectives and private detectives alike.

Written before Doyle had fully developed his skills as a mystery novelist, this novel divides in half. In the first part, which begins around 1880, Holmes helps investigate the murder of Enoch J. Drebber of Cleveland, Ohio, apparently poisoned in an abandoned house. A tall stranger has been seen in the neighborhood, and some clues have been planted at the crime scene. Later, Drebber's traveling companion is killed. Holmes, however, manages to solve both cases by the halfway point in the book.

The second half of the novel flashes back to 1847. John Ferrier, one of twenty-one people in a caravan, is traveling through "an arid and repulsive desert" in the American west when the caravan runs out of food and water. Ferrier and a small girl, the only survivors, search for water until they collapse. Rescued by Brigham Young and a wagon train of Mormons on their way to found their city, Ferrier, in exchange for food and water, agrees to convert and become a good Mormon. Years later, when Ferrier is a successful rancher and Lucy has fallen in love with a Gentile, the elders of the church demand that Ferrier agree to wed Lucy to a member of the church, a decision he resists.

These seemingly unrelated stories eventually overlap, but Doyle's incomplete and inaccurate knowledge of Mormon beliefs show his deliberate attempt to capitalize on the mysteries of the "wild west" and of Mormonism for the sake of his story, now quite dated. The ending consists of Holmes simply ticking off the clues which have led him to solve the murders and capture the murderer, not a dramatic or exciting climax. Watson is seen as a soldier-hero and doctor, and not as a bumbling side-kick to Holmes, who is shown here as a decidedly odd and pompous man, less "clever" than he becomes in time. Fun to read and interesting primarily because it is the first Holmes mystery. Mary Whipple

Wonderfully entertaining, 08 Mar 2004
It is 1878 and Doctor John Watson, his health damaged by his experiences with the British Army in Afghanistan during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, is looking for lodgings in the great city of London. It seems fortuitous, when a mutual friend introduces him to another who needs someone to share costs on a suite on Baker Street, but this other man is quite an eccentric. Sherlock Holmes has bent his life and education towards turning himself into the premier detective.

Watson can hardly credit Holmes's claims of what a first-class detective can do. But, when a note arrives from a Scotland Yard detective, inviting Holmes to consult on a particularly mysterious murder, Watson soon finds himself carried along by Holmes, watching his new friend's powers unravel a seemingly inscrutable knot. The game is afoot, and Holmes needs to solve a murder, and bring a murderer to justice.

This fascinating book was first published in 1887, and was the very first Sherlock Holmes story. In it we get to see the first meeting of Holmes and Watson, and hear Holmes explain his methods in detail. If you are a fan of murder mysteries, then this is definitely a book that you should not miss.

The center part of this story revolves around the actions of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City, Utah. Author Arthur Conan Doyle had a tendency to "wing" the details of his story, and his treatment of the Mormons shows a certain carelessness in how he presented them. Therefore, if you are a Mormon, you will most likely find this book offensive.

But, that said, this is a wonderfully entertaining story that is sure to please most every mystery fan. And, if you are a fan of Sherlock Holmes, then you must read this book! It's great.

The First Sherlock Holmes Story, 15 Jul 2002
Although it's not the best written of the Holmes stories, "A Study in Scarlet" is most definitely my favorite. I love the description of Holmes' character in this book and the way Arthur Conan Doyle begins the relationship between Holmes and Watson is beyond brilliant. It's positively indescribable. The only thing I don't like about this book is the way in which it is written. The book is divided into two parts. In the first half, Holmes and Watson meet and then investigate a crime. The second half tells the history of the people involved in the crime. Part II is good although Holmes and Watson are not in it, but the format is somewhat confusing on the first read because it appears that Doyle is beginning an entirely new story without finishing the first one. But overall this book is a fine addition to the Sherlock Holmes canon and I would highly recommend it.

Enter the world of Sherlock Holmes, 29 Dec 2000
"A Study in Scarlet" is the first of the Sherlock Holmes series and therefore gives the reader the perfect opportunity to progressively befriend the famous detective at the same time as the good Dr Watson does. Throughout the course of the book you will marvel at the numerous skills that Holmes has so painfully striven to attain through arduous hard work during his life, and watch as he uses them in practice. As the mystery of the case develops, so does Dr Watson's friendship with Holmes, and the reader finds himself in the same position as Watson; baffled and confused as to how all the pieces of the puzzle which Holmes has so cleverly found, will ever fit together. After reading this book I found myself envious of all the remarkable talents that Holmes possesses, and every time he proposed a new theory, I could not rest until he explained the seemingly simple pathways he used to arrive at his conclusion. This book provides an excellent introduction to the world of Sherlock Holmes, it was the first of this series of books that I bought, and will certainly not be the last. Experience the astonishing mind of perhaps the greatest detective created by reading "A Study In Scarlet".

Types on your eyeballs with a hot needle, 08 Nov 2008
Unlike the first three of the London Books (forgotten) Classics series I had never heard of Robert Westerby or this book Wide Boys Never Work. Westerby it seems started life as a gritty London author of street literature who finished up screenwriting for Uncle Walt in California. He wrote this story of a disaffected provincial factory worker getting wrapped up with a seedy London crime gang at a ridiclously young age and as Iain Sinclair who wrote the quirky intro and end notes he 'types on your eyeballs with a hot needle'. It's good. Westerby was an angry young man when the accepted angry young men were angry young babies.

Frequently exasperating, but Sinclair's shaggy dog story has a unique dark poetry, 04 Mar 2007
When Angela Carter no less, whose own work couldn't exactly be described as conventional, is quoted on this book's back cover blurb describing it as "a great, strange [...] fiction about London that follows its own logic", well, I suppose we can't say we haven't been warned. Often more anti-novel than novel, Sinclair's relentlessly downbeat low-life tale has little in the way of plot and makes few concessions to the reader as it meanders its way through the East End of London, as polluted and silt-heavy with the weight of history as the river it describes. Fascinatingly, Sinclair himself seems well aware of the reader's likely reaction, summed up in a fictitious Editor's (self-referential) response to the novel's supposed first draft - "Who is 'I'? ....Too compressed. What slaughter? What psycopath? What nickname?". "What nickname?" goes pretty much to the root of the reader's problem: Sinclair is an inveterate and unashamed namedropper, with his text's cultural referents being too dense and numerous for any single reader to have much chance of catching them all. For example, on a randomly chosen page from the last of his twelve tales, he invokes Joe Orton (fair enough, heard of him), Douglas Bader (sorry, no), Max Roach (vaguely ... a drummer, maybe??) and Michael Sandle (sorry, really haven't the foggiest). Well, call me thick, but it's nice not to have to consult Wikipedia more than once per page. And a lot of the references are just going to be lost on those of us not privileged to live in the Capital: maybe it's because I'm not a Londoner...

So, why bother? Because when Sinclair really finds his form in these twelve murky tales, he is on fire with a dark poetry which is quite unlike anything else in recent British literature. This is particularly true of the darkest of the book's sections, "Horse Spittle" (featuring the disappearance and presumed murder of a nurse turned prostitute), "Eisenbahnangst" (with its chilling Freudian deconstruction of Tenniel's famous illustrations for Lewis Carroll's "Alice Through the Looking-Glass"), and "Prima Donna", which describes Sinclair's supposed encounter with a disturbing character who has a troubling obsession with the victims of Jack the Ripper.

The book's twelve sections essentially narrate the wanderings of a second-hand-book-seller turned writer called (yes, you guessed it) Iain Sinclair, in the ever-shifting and thoroughly unreliable riverine territory of Margaret Thatcher's London Docklands. Although many of the characters he encounters are unashamed grotesques, it is in his portrayal of society's victims (prostitutes; rent-boys; addicts; the mentally ill) that Sinclair really engages the reader's sympathy.

Parts of the book have inevitably dated (the Silvertown memorial?? - presumably topical in Thatcher's last years as Prime Minister), and Sinclair's political satire in "Art of the State" and "Isle of Doges" is unashamedly heavy-handed (though I did love the vision of Dennis Thatcher as the Cerne Giant, naked and brandishing a golf club ...). There is no doubt that this "novel", even more than most of Sinclair's books, makes very considerable demands on the reader. All the same, it's worth making this trip downriver.

All Over the Map, 21 Jan 2003
I picked up this book for a number of reasons: primarily, I was intrigued by the concept of a novel comprised of twelve stories which would reveal a gritty, dark side of London's docklands. (I'm not a Londoner, nor have I spent a great deal of time there, but I am drawn to fiction about it for some reason.) I have to admit I was also impressed with the plethora of effusive praise from the British press on the jacket. Having read the first three stories, I have now set it aside, unlikely to return to it. Why? Well, it all starts and ends with Sinclair's style. Had I known beforehand that he is a poet, I probably would have avoided the book. My experience with poets is that their prose style tends to be overly ornate. Some find this wholly delightful, but it generally leaves me deeply unmoved.

I liked the notion of what Sinclair was trying to do in tying the Thames to Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and mixing it all up with a critique of Thatcherite policies and the the capitalist assault on the underclass. He's clearly a writer with a political viewpoint who absorbs his cultural surroundings and infuse them back into his writing. Unfortunately, the connections aren't always visible, and worse, the stories aren't particularly interesting. There are flashes here and there of something, and clearly Sinclair has masses of knowledge and skill, but it's hard to find any cohesion to it all. The reviewer at The New York Times put it rather well in saying, "The book is a tremendous pillar of words, not all of them making direct sense and not trying to." It's writing one can appreciate, but not really enjoy, and since I have stacks of other unread books waiting for me, I'll put this one aside-perhaps forever.

Sinclair's Splendid Smoke Opera, 12 Jan 2002
I think Michael Moorcock coined the phrase 'Smoke Opera' to describe the raft of "London" books, both fiction and non-fiction, which have been published in the last few years and reaching some kind of culmination with that great work of fiction Ackroyd's "London: A Biography". Downriver remains my favourite Sinclair novel and I can't recommend it highly enough. If you want real substance, a sense of value which you get from a Victorian classic, with the sense of street suss you expect from the latest junkista. It's very persuasive writing. Like Mother London, you have to take the writer's authority on trust, because this isn't a standard modernist text, but it is so thoroughly rewarding, you will not regret giving him that trust. These are very substantial books indeed, likely to outlast most of their contemporaries! Downriver will run and run! Twelve interconnecting narratives. Twelve times the value of the average Martin Amis! I originally bought this because Laurie Taylor said it was the best value for money to take on holiday. He was right.

Rich and deep, 14 Jul 2001
This is the best of all the London books and could be one of the best novels of the past forty or fifty years! It is written on dozens of levels and can be reread for fresh insights, humour and general brilliance. Wonderful book. Honestly, most other stuff seems pretty thin in comparison.

This and Mother London are the best, 20 Mar 2001
I read this because I read somewhere (Evening Standard ?) that this and Mother London were the two best novels about London. Together -- and they are very different 'reads' on the city although often linked together -- they do make a monumental picture of a living, richly textured capital. Other writers never seem to get as thoroughly involved with their material as Sinclair and Moorcock who almost seem to think the city IS them. That is, where a writer like Martin Amis will really be writing about himself in some way and his responses to what he sees, Sinclair and Moorcock seem to ABSORB themselves in the city -- accepting it, lock, stock and occasionally smoking barrel -- and celebrating it. That celebratory note is what unites the books. This is not your usual wimp's response to the Terrors and Pitfalls of the Big City. This is I LIKE IT HERE, CRAP AND ALL. The mocking lyricism is another thing which sometimes echoes across both books. These are sophisticated writers, but they are writers of passion and they are both romantic writers in the best, most intelligent sense. Impatient with orthodoxy, suspicious of received ideas, they go and look at everything for themselves and bring us back their reports. You can't ask for better than that. You do get better than that, because you get some glorious writing and wonderful characters. Downriver is constructed as twelve interlocking narratives and has a rather monumental Victorian structure to it. It feels a bit like the Tower of London, too. Mother London in contrast is the Kew Tropical Plant House with shafts of light falling forever unexpectedly on things we hadn't noticed before. Downriver is also full of things we hadn't noticed before and I am now re-reading it because I am discovering more things I hadn't noticed the first time! This is a Chinese box of delights and Mother London is, if you like, an Albert Memorial of delights. Together they show that English fiction has not lost sight of a larger contextual universe while examining local life-forms. In spite of being about one specific city, they refute the impression of the modern English novel as provincial or, at best, regional in its focus. I can't recommend them too enthusiastically. Both these great books are built to last. JB

"From a drop of water, a logician can infer...an Atlantic or a Niagara.", 07 Dec 2006
Published in 1878, this first Sherlock Holmes story is a delightful curiosity, rather than a finely developed novel. Here Dr. Watson, just released from the British army and recovering from serious wounds from the second Afghan war, meets Sherlock Holmes for the first time. Both have been looking for someone to share the rent--at 221B Baker Street. Holmes, without a "real" career, spends considerable time experimenting in a hospital chemistry lab and interviewing people who come to the apartment. Watson soon discovers that Holmes is a detective consultant, working with police detectives and private detectives alike.

Written before Doyle had fully developed his skills as a mystery novelist, this novel divides in half. In the first part, which begins around 1880, Holmes helps investigate the murder of Enoch J. Drebber of Cleveland, Ohio, apparently poisoned in an abandoned house. A tall stranger has been seen in the neighborhood, and some clues have been planted at the crime scene. Later, Drebber's traveling companion is killed. Holmes, however, manages to solve both cases by the halfway point in the book.

The second half of the novel flashes back to 1847. John Ferrier, one of twenty-one people in a caravan, is traveling through "an arid and repulsive desert" in the American west when the caravan runs out of food and water. Ferrier and a small girl, the only survivors, search for water until they collapse. Rescued by Brigham Young and a wagon train of Mormons on their way to found their city, Ferrier, in exchange for food and water, agrees to convert and become a good Mormon. Years later, when Ferrier is a successful rancher and Lucy has fallen in love with a Gentile, the elders of the church demand that Ferrier agree to wed Lucy to a member of the church, a decision he resists.

These seemingly unrelated stories eventually overlap, but Doyle's incomplete and inaccurate knowledge of Mormon beliefs show his deliberate attempt to capitalize on the mysteries of the "wild west" and of Mormonism for the sake of his story, now quite dated. The ending consists of Holmes simply ticking off the clues which have led him to solve the murders and capture the murderer, not a dramatic or exciting climax. Watson is seen as a soldier-hero and doctor, and not as a bumbling side-kick to Holmes, who is shown here as a decidedly odd and pompous man, less "clever" than he becomes in time. Fun to read and interesting primarily because it is the first Holmes mystery. Mary Whipple

Wonderfully entertaining, 08 Mar 2004
It is 1878 and Doctor John Watson, his health damaged by his experiences with the British Army in Afghanistan during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, is looking for lodgings in the great city of London. It seems fortuitous, when a mutual friend introduces him to another who needs someone to share costs on a suite on Baker Street, but this other man is quite an eccentric. Sherlock Holmes has bent his life and education towards turning himself into the premier detective.

Watson can hardly credit Holmes's claims of what a first-class detective can do. But, when a note arrives from a Scotland Yard detective, inviting Holmes to consult on a particularly mysterious murder, Watson soon finds himself carried along by Holmes, watching his new friend's powers unravel a seemingly inscrutable knot. The game is afoot, and Holmes needs to solve a murder, and bring a murderer to justice.

This fascinating book was first published in 1887, and was the very first Sherlock Holmes story. In it we get to see the first meeting of Holmes and Watson, and hear Holmes explain his methods in detail. If you are a fan of murder mysteries, then this is definitely a book that you should not miss.

The center part of this story revolves around the actions of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City, Utah. Author Arthur Conan Doyle had a tendency to "wing" the details of his story, and his treatment of the Mormons shows a certain carelessness in how he presented them. Therefore, if you are a Mormon, you will most likely find this book offensive.

But, that said, this is a wonderfully entertaining story that is sure to please most every mystery fan. And, if you are a fan of Sherlock Holmes, then you must read this book! It's great.

The First Sherlock Holmes Story, 15 Jul 2002
Although it's not the best written of the Holmes stories, "A Study in Scarlet" is most definitely my favorite. I love the description of Holmes' character in this book and the way Arthur Conan Doyle begins the relationship between Holmes and Watson is beyond brilliant. It's positively indescribable. The only thing I don't like about this book is the way in which it is written. The book is divided into two parts. In the first half, Holmes and Watson meet and then investigate a crime. The second half tells the history of the people involved in the crime. Part II is good although Holmes and Watson are not in it, but the format is somewhat confusing on the first read because it appears that Doyle is beginning an entirely new story without finishing the first one. But overall this book is a fine addition to the Sherlock Holmes canon and I would highly recommend it.

Enter the world of Sherlock Holmes, 29 Dec 2000
"A Study in Scarlet" is the first of the Sherlock Holmes series and therefore gives the reader the perfect opportunity to progressively befriend the famous detective at the same time as the good Dr Watson does. Throughout the course of the book you will marvel at the numerous skills that Holmes has so painfully striven to attain through arduous hard work during his life, and watch as he uses them in practice. As the mystery of the case develops, so does Dr Watson's friendship with Holmes, and the reader finds himself in the same position as Watson; baffled and confused as to how all the pieces of the puzzle which Holmes has so cleverly found, will ever fit together. After reading this book I found myself envious of all the remarkable talents that Holmes possesses, and every time he proposed a new theory, I could not rest until he explained the seemingly simple pathways he used to arrive at his conclusion. This book provides an excellent introduction to the world of Sherlock Holmes, it was the first of this series of books that I bought, and will certainly not be the last. Experience the astonishing mind of perhaps the greatest detective created by reading "A Study In Scarlet".

Frequently exasperating, but Sinclair's shaggy dog story has a unique dark poetry, 04 Mar 2007
When Angela Carter no less, whose own work couldn't exactly be described as conventional, is quoted on this book's back cover blurb describing it as "a great, strange [...] fiction about London that follows its own logic", well, I suppose we can't say we haven't been warned. Often more anti-novel than novel, Sinclair's relentlessly downbeat low-life tale has little in the way of plot and makes few concessions to the reader as it meanders its way through the East End of London, as polluted and silt-heavy with the weight of history as the river it describes. Fascinatingly, Sinclair himself seems well aware of the reader's likely reaction, summed up in a fictitious Editor's (self-referential) response to the novel's supposed first draft - "Who is 'I'? ....Too compressed. What slaughter? What psycopath? What nickname?". "What nickname?" goes pretty much to the root of the reader's problem: Sinclair is an inveterate and unashamed namedropper, with his text's cultural referents being too dense and numerous for any single reader to have much chance of catching them all. For example, on a randomly chosen page from the last of his twelve tales, he invokes Joe Orton (fair enough, heard of him), Douglas Bader (sorry, no), Max Roach (vaguely ... a drummer, maybe??) and Michael Sandle (sorry, really haven't the foggiest). Well, call me thick, but it's nice not to have to consult Wikipedia more than once per page. And a lot of the references are just going to be lost on those of us not privileged to live in the Capital: maybe it's because I'm not a Londoner...

So, why bother? Because when Sinclair really finds his form in these twelve murky tales, he is on fire with a dark poetry which is quite unlike anything else in recent British literature. This is particularly true of the darkest of the book's sections, "Horse Spittle" (featuring the disappearance and presumed murder of a nurse turned prostitute), "Eisenbahnangst" (with its chilling Freudian deconstruction of Tenniel's famous illustrations for Lewis Carroll's "Alice Through the Looking-Glass"), and "Prima Donna", which describes Sinclair's supposed encounter with a disturbing character who has a troubling obsession with the victims of Jack the Ripper.

The book's twelve sections essentially narrate the wanderings of a second-hand-book-seller turned writer called (yes, you guessed it) Iain Sinclair, in the ever-shifting and thoroughly unreliable riverine territory of Margaret Thatcher's London Docklands. Although many of the characters he encounters are unashamed grotesques, it is in his portrayal of society's victims (prostitutes; rent-boys; addicts; the mentally ill) that Sinclair really engages the reader's sympathy.

Parts of the book have inevitably dated (the Silvertown memorial?? - presumably topical in Thatcher's last years as Prime Minister), and Sinclair's political satire in "Art of the State" and "Isle of Doges" is unashamedly heavy-handed (though I did love the vision of Dennis Thatcher as the Cerne Giant, naked and brandishing a golf club ...). There is no doubt that this "novel", even more than most of Sinclair's books, makes very considerable demands on the reader. All the same, it's worth making this trip downriver.

All Over the Map, 21 Jan 2003
I picked up this book for a number of reasons: primarily, I was intrigued by the concept of a novel comprised of twelve stories which would reveal a gritty, dark side of London's docklands. (I'm not a Londoner, nor have I spent a great deal of time there, but I am drawn to fiction about it for some reason.) I have to admit I was also impressed with the plethora of effusive praise from the British press on the jacket. Having read the first three stories, I have now set it aside, unlikely to return to it. Why? Well, it all starts and ends with Sinclair's style. Had I known beforehand that he is a poet, I probably would have avoided the book. My experience with poets is that their prose style tends to be overly ornate. Some find this wholly delightful, but it generally leaves me deeply unmoved.

I liked the notion of what Sinclair was trying to do in tying the Thames to Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and mixing it all up with a critique of Thatcherite policies and the the capitalist assault on the underclass. He's clearly a writer with a political viewpoint who absorbs his cultural surroundings and infuse them back into his writing. Unfortunately, the connections aren't always visible, and worse, the stories aren't particularly interesting. There are flashes here and there of something, and clearly Sinclair has masses of knowledge and skill, but it's hard to find any cohesion to it all. The reviewer at The New York Times put it rather well in saying, "The book is a tremendous pillar of words, not all of them making direct sense and not trying to." It's writing one can appreciate, but not really enjoy, and since I have stacks of other unread books waiting for me, I'll put this one aside-perhaps forever.

Sinclair's Splendid Smoke Opera, 12 Jan 2002
I think Michael Moorcock coined the phrase 'Smoke Opera' to describe the raft of "London" books, both fiction and non-fiction, which have been published in the last few years and reaching some kind of culmination with that great work of fiction Ackroyd's "London: A Biography". Downriver remains my favourite Sinclair novel and I can't recommend it highly enough. If you want real substance, a sense of value which you get from a Victorian classic, with the sense of street suss you expect from the latest junkista. It's very persuasive writing. Like Mother London, you have to take the writer's authority on trust, because this isn't a standard modernist text, but it is so thoroughly rewarding, you will not regret giving him that trust. These are very substantial books indeed, likely to outlast most of their contemporaries! Downriver will run and run! Twelve interconnecting narratives. Twelve times the value of the average Martin Amis! I originally bought this because Laurie Taylor said it was the best value for money to take on holiday. He was right.

Rich and deep, 14 Jul 2001
This is the best of all the London books and could be one of the best novels of the past forty or fifty years! It is written on dozens of levels and can be reread for fresh insights, humour and general brilliance. Wonderful book. Honestly, most other stuff seems pretty thin in comparison.

This and Mother London are the best, 20 Mar 2001
I read this because I read somewhere (Evening Standard ?) that this and Mother London were the two best novels about London. Together -- and they are very different 'reads' on the city although often linked together -- they do make a monumental picture of a living, richly textured capital. Other writers never seem to get as thoroughly involved with their material as Sinclair and Moorcock who almost seem to think the city IS them. That is, where a writer like Martin Amis will really be writing about himself in some way and his responses to what he sees, Sinclair and Moorcock seem to ABSORB themselves in the city -- accepting it, lock, stock and occasionally smoking barrel -- and celebrating it. That celebratory note is what unites the books. This is not your usual wimp's response to the Terrors and Pitfalls of the Big City. This is I LIKE IT HERE, CRAP AND ALL. The mocking lyricism is another thing which sometimes echoes across both books. These are sophisticated writers, but they are writers of passion and they are both romantic writers in the best, most intelligent sense. Impatient with orthodoxy, suspicious of received ideas, they go and look at everything for themselves and bring us back their reports. You can't ask for better than that. You do get better than that, because you get some glorious writing and wonderful characters. Downriver is constructed as twelve interlocking narratives and has a rather monumental Victorian structure to it. It feels a bit like the Tower of London, too. Mother London in contrast is the Kew Tropical Plant House with shafts of light falling forever unexpectedly on things we hadn't noticed before. Downriver is also full of things we hadn't noticed before and I am now re-reading it because I am discovering more things I hadn't noticed the first time! This is a Chinese box of delights and Mother London is, if you like, an Albert Memorial of delights. Together they show that English fiction has not lost sight of a larger contextual universe while examining local life-forms. In spite of being about one specific city, they refute the impression of the modern English novel as provincial or, at best, regional in its focus. I can't recommend them too enthusiastically. Both these great books are built to last. JB

Types on your eyeballs with a hot needle, 08 Nov 2008
Unlike the first three of the London Books (forgotten) Classics series I had never heard of Robert Westerby or this book Wide Boys Never Work. Westerby it seems started life as a gritty London author of street literature who finished up screenwriting for Uncle Walt in California. He wrote this story of a disaffected provincial factory worker getting wrapped up with a seedy London crime gang at a ridiclously young age and as Iain Sinclair who wrote the quirky intro and end notes he 'types on your eyeballs with a hot needle'. It's good. Westerby was an angry young man when the accepted angry young men were angry young babies.

Frequently exasperating, but Sinclair's shaggy dog story has a unique dark poetry, 04 Mar 2007
When Angela Carter no less, whose own work couldn't exactly be described as conventional, is quoted on this book's back cover blurb describing it as "a great, strange [...] fiction about London that follows its own logic", well, I suppose we can't say we haven't been warned. Often more anti-novel than novel, Sinclair's relentlessly downbeat low-life tale has little in the way of plot and makes few concessions to the reader as it meanders its way through the East End of London, as polluted and silt-heavy with the weight of history as the river it describes. Fascinatingly, Sinclair himself seems well aware of the reader's likely reaction, summed up in a fictitious Editor's (self-referential) response to the novel's supposed first draft - "Who is 'I'? ....Too compressed. What slaughter? What psycopath? What nickname?". "What nickname?" goes pretty much to the root of the reader's problem: Sinclair is an inveterate and unashamed namedropper, with his text's cultural referents being too dense and numerous for any single reader to have much chance of catching them all. For example, on a randomly chosen page from the last of his twelve tales, he invokes Joe Orton (fair enough, heard of him), Douglas Bader (sorry, no), Max Roach (vaguely ... a drummer, maybe??) and Michael Sandle (sorry, really haven't the foggiest). Well, call me thick, but it's nice not to have to consult Wikipedia more than once per page. And a lot of the references are just going to be lost on those of us not privileged to live in the Capital: maybe it's because I'm not a Londoner...

So, why bother? Because when Sinclair really finds his form in these twelve murky tales, he is on fire with a dark poetry which is quite unlike anything else in recent British literature. This is particularly true of the darkest of the book's sections, "Horse Spittle" (featuring the disappearance and presumed murder of a nurse turned prostitute), "Eisenbahnangst" (with its chilling Freudian deconstruction of Tenniel's famous illustrations for Lewis Carroll's "Alice Through the Looking-Glass"), and "Prima Donna", which describes Sinclair's supposed encounter with a disturbing character who has a troubling obsession with the victims of Jack the Ripper.

The book's twelve sections essentially narrate the wanderings of a second-hand-book-seller turned writer called (yes, you guessed it) Iain Sinclair, in the ever-shifting and thoroughly unreliable riverine territory of Margaret Thatcher's London Docklands. Although many of the characters he encounters are unashamed grotesques, it is in his portrayal of society's victims (prostitutes; rent-boys; addicts; the mentally ill) that Sinclair really engages the reader's sympathy.

Parts of the book have inevitably dated (the Silvertown memorial?? - presumably topical in Thatcher's last years as Prime Minister), and Sinclair's political satire in "Art of the State" and "Isle of Doges" is unashamedly heavy-handed (though I did love the vision of Dennis Thatcher as the Cerne Giant, naked and brandishing a golf club ...). There is no doubt that this "novel", even more than most of Sinclair's books, makes very considerable demands on the reader. All the same, it's worth making this trip downriver.

All Over the Map, 21 Jan 2003
I picked up this book for a number of reasons: primarily, I was intrigued by the concept of a novel comprised of twelve stories which would reveal a gritty, dark side of London's docklands. (I'm not a Londoner, nor have I spent a great deal of time there, but I am drawn to fiction about it for some reason.) I have to admit I was also impressed with the plethora of effusive praise from the British press on the jacket. Having read the first three stories, I have now set it aside, unlikely to return to it. Why? Well, it all starts and ends with Sinclair's style. Had I known beforehand that he is a poet, I probably would have avoided the book. My experience with poets is that their prose style tends to be overly ornate. Some find this wholly delightful, but it generally leaves me deeply unmoved.

I liked the notion of what Sinclair was trying to do in tying the Thames to Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and mixing it all up with a critique of Thatcherite policies and the the capitalist assault on the underclass. He's clearly a writer with a political viewpoint who absorbs his cultural surroundings and infuse them back into his writing. Unfortunately, the connections aren't always visible, and worse, the stories aren't particularly interesting. There are flashes here and there of something, and clearly Sinclair has masses of knowledge and skill, but it's hard to find any cohesion to it all. The reviewer at The New York Times put it rather well in saying, "The book is a tremendous pillar of words, not all of them making direct sense and not trying to." It's writing one can appreciate, but not really enjoy, and since I have stacks of other unread books waiting for me, I'll put this one aside-perhaps forever.

Sinclair's Splendid Smoke Opera, 12 Jan 2002
I think Michael Moorcock coined the phrase 'Smoke Opera' to describe the raft of "London" books, both fiction and non-fiction, which have been published in the last few years and reaching some kind of culmination with that great work of fiction Ackroyd's "London: A Biography". Downriver remains my favourite Sinclair novel and I can't recommend it highly enough. If you want real substance, a sense of value which you get from a Victorian classic, with the sense of street suss you expect from the latest junkista. It's very persuasive writing. Like Mother London, you have to take the writer's authority on trust, because this isn't a standard modernist text, but it is so thoroughly rewarding, you will not regret giving him that trust. These are very substantial books indeed, likely to outlast most of their contemporaries! Downriver will run and run! Twelve interconnecting narratives. Twelve times the value of the average Martin Amis! I originally bought this because Laurie Taylor said it was the best value for money to take on holiday. He was right.

Rich and deep, 14 Jul 2001
This is the best of all the London books and could be one of the best novels of the past forty or fifty years! It is written on dozens of levels and can be reread for fresh insights, humour and general brilliance. Wonderful book. Honestly, most other stuff seems pretty thin in comparison.

This and Mother London are the best, 20 Mar 2001
I read this because I read somewhere (Evening Standard ?) that this and Mother London were the two best novels about London. Together -- and they are very different 'reads' on the city although often linked together -- they do make a monumental picture of a living, richly textured capital. Other writers never seem to get as thoroughly involved with their material as Sinclair and Moorcock who almost seem to think the city IS them. That is, where a writer like Martin Amis will really be writing about himself in some way and his responses to what he sees, Sinclair and Moorcock seem to ABSORB themselves in the city -- accepting it, lock, stock and occasionally smoking barrel -- and celebrating it. That celebratory note is what unites the books. This is not your usual wimp's response to the Terrors and Pitfalls of the Big City. This is I LIKE IT HERE, CRAP AND ALL. The mocking lyricism is another thing which sometimes echoes across both books. These are sophisticated writers, but they are writers of passion and they are both romantic writers in the best, most intelligent sense. Impatient with orthodoxy, suspicious of received ideas, they go and look at everything for themselves and bring us back their reports. You can't ask for better than that. You do get better than that, because you get some glorious writing and wonderful characters. Downriver is constructed as twelve interlocking narratives and has a rather monumental Victorian structure to it. It feels a bit like the Tower of London, too. Mother London in contrast is the Kew Tropical Plant House with shafts of light falling forever unexpectedly on things we hadn't noticed before. Downriver is also full of things we hadn't noticed before and I am now re-reading it because I am discovering more things I hadn't noticed the first time! This is a Chinese box of delights and Mother London is, if you like, an Albert Memorial of delights. Together they show that English fiction has not lost sight of a larger contextual universe while examining local life-forms. In spite of being about one specific city, they refute the impression of the modern English novel as provincial or, at best, regional in its focus. I can't recommend them too enthusiastically. Both these great books are built to last. JB

"From a drop of water, a logician can infer...an Atlantic or a Niagara.", 07 Dec 2006
Published in 1878, this first Sherlock Holmes story is a delightful curiosity, rather than a finely developed novel. Here Dr. Watson, just released from the British army and recovering from serious wounds from the second Afghan war, meets Sherlock Holmes for the first time. Both have been looking for someone to share the rent--at 221B Baker Street. Holmes, without a "real" career, spends considerable time experimenting in a hospital chemistry lab and interviewing people who come to the apartment. Watson soon discovers that Holmes is a detective consultant, working with police detectives and private detectives alike.

Written before Doyle had fully developed his skills as a mystery novelist, this novel divides in half. In the first part, which begins around 1880, Holmes helps investigate the murder of Enoch J. Drebber of Cleveland, Ohio, apparently poisoned in an abandoned house. A tall stranger has been seen in the neighborhood, and some clues have been planted at the crime scene. Later, Drebber's traveling companion is killed. Holmes, however, manages to solve both cases by the halfway point in the book.

The second half of the novel flashes back to 1847. John Ferrier, one of twenty-one people in a caravan, is traveling through "an arid and repulsive desert" in the American west when the caravan runs out of food and water. Ferrier and a small girl, the only survivors, search for water until they collapse. Rescued by Brigham Young and a wagon train of Mormons on their way to found their city, Ferrier, in exchange for food and water, agrees to convert and become a good Mormon. Years later, when Ferrier is a successful rancher and Lucy has fallen in love with a Gentile, the elders of the church demand that Ferrier agree to wed Lucy to a member of the church, a decision he resists.

These seemingly unrelated stories eventually overlap, but Doyle's incomplete and inaccurate knowledge of Mormon beliefs show his deliberate attempt to capitalize on the mysteries of the "wild west" and of Mormonism for the sake of his story, now quite dated. The ending consists of Holmes simply ticking off the clues which have led him to solve the murders and capture the murderer, not a dramatic or exciting climax. Watson is seen as a soldier-hero and doctor, and not as a bumbling side-kick to Holmes, who is shown here as a decidedly odd and pompous man, less "clever" than he becomes in time. Fun to read and interesting primarily because it is the first Holmes mystery. Mary Whipple

Wonderfully entertaining, 08 Mar 2004
It is 1878 and Doctor John Watson, his health damaged by his experiences with the British Army in Afghanistan during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, is looking for lodgings in the great city of London. It seems fortuitous, when a mutual friend introduces him to another who needs someone to share costs on a suite on Baker Street, but this other man is quite an eccentric. Sherlock Holmes has bent his life and education towards turning himself into the premier detective.

Watson can hardly credit Holmes's claims of what a first-class detective can do. But, when a note arrives from a Scotland Yard detective, inviting Holmes to consult on a particularly mysterious murder, Watson soon finds himself carried along by Holmes, watching his new friend's powers unravel a seemingly inscrutable knot. The game is afoot, and Holmes needs to solve a murder, and bring a murderer to justice.

This fascinating book was first published in 1887, and was the very first Sherlock Holmes story. In it we get to see the first meeting of Holmes and Watson, and hear Holmes explain his methods in detail. If you are a fan of murder mysteries, then this is definitely a book that you should not miss.

The center part of this story revolves around the actions of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City, Utah. Author Arthur Conan Doyle had a tendency to "wing" the details of his story, and his treatment of the Mormons shows a certain carelessness in how he presented them. Therefore, if you are a Mormon, you will most likely find this book offensive.

But, that said, this is a wonderfully entertaining story that is sure to please most every mystery fan. And, if you are a fan of Sherlock Holmes, then you must read this book! It's great.

The First Sherlock Holmes Story, 15 Jul 2002
Although it's not the best written of the Holmes stories, "A Study in Scarlet" is most definitely my favorite. I love the description of Holmes' character in this book and the way Arthur Conan Doyle begins the relationship between Holmes and Watson is beyond brilliant. It's positively indescribable. The only thing I don't like about this book is the way in which it is written. The book is divided into two parts. In the first half, Holmes and Watson meet and then investigate a crime. The second half tells the history of the people involved in the crime. Part II is good although Holmes and Watson are not in it, but the format is somewhat confusing on the first read because it appears that Doyle is beginning an entirely new story without finishing the first one. But overall this book is a fine addition to the Sherlock Holmes canon and I would highly recommend it.

Enter the world of Sherlock Holmes, 29 Dec 2000
"A Study in Scarlet" is the first of the Sherlock Holmes series and therefore gives the reader the perfect opportunity to progressively befriend the famous detective at the same time as the good Dr Watson does. Throughout the course of the book you will marvel at the numerous skills that Holmes has so painfully striven to attain through arduous hard work during his life, and watch as he uses them in practice. As the mystery of the case develops, so does Dr Watson's friendship with Holmes, and the reader finds himself in the same position as Watson; baffled and confused as to how all the pieces of the puzzle which Holmes has so cleverly found, will ever fit together. After reading this book I found myself envious of all the remarkable talents that Holmes possesses, and every time he proposed a new theory, I could not rest until he explained the seemingly simple pathways he used to arrive at his conclusion. This book provides an excellent introduction to the world of Sherlock Holmes, it was the first of this series of books that I bought, and will certainly not be the last. Experience the astonishing mind of perhaps the greatest detective created by reading "A Study In Scarlet".

Frequently exasperating, but Sinclair's shaggy dog story has a unique dark poetry, 04 Mar 2007
When Angela Carter no less, whose own work couldn't exactly be described as conventional, is quoted on this book's back cover blurb describing it as "a great, strange [...] fiction about London that follows its own logic", well, I suppose we can't say we haven't been warned. Often more anti-novel than novel, Sinclair's relentlessly downbeat low-life tale has little in the way of plot and makes few concessions to the reader as it meanders its way through the East End of London, as polluted and silt-heavy with the weight of history as the river it describes. Fascinatingly, Sinclair himself seems well aware of the reader's likely reaction, summed up in a fictitious Editor's (self-referential) response to the novel's supposed first draft - "Who is 'I'? ....Too compressed. What slaughter? What psycopath? What nickname?". "What nickname?" goes pretty much to the root of the reader's problem: Sinclair is an inveterate and unashamed namedropper, with his text's cultural referents being too dense and numerous for any single reader to have much chance of catching them all. For example, on a randomly chosen page from the last of his twelve tales, he invokes Joe Orton (fair enough, heard of him), Douglas Bader (sorry, no), Max Roach (vaguely ... a drummer, maybe??) and Michael Sandle (sorry, really haven't the foggiest). Well, call me thick, but it's nice not to have to consult Wikipedia more than once per page. And a lot of the references are just going to be lost on those of us not privileged to live in the Capital: maybe it's because I'm not a Londoner...

So, why bother? Because when Sinclair really finds his form in these twelve murky tales, he is on fire with a dark poetry which is quite unlike anything else in recent British literature. This is particularly true of the darkest of the book's sections, "Horse Spittle" (featuring the disappearance and presumed murder of a nurse turned prostitute), "Eisenbahnangst" (with its chilling Freudian deconstruction of Tenniel's famous illustrations for Lewis Carroll's "Alice Through the Looking-Glass"), and "Prima Donna", which describes Sinclair's supposed encounter with a disturbing character who has a troubling obsession with the victims of Jack the Ripper.

The book's twelve sections essentially narrate the wanderings of a second-hand-book-seller turned writer called (yes, you guessed it) Iain Sinclair, in the ever-shifting and thoroughly unreliable riverine territory of Margaret Thatcher's London Docklands. Although many of the characters he encounters are unashamed grotesques, it is in his portrayal of society's victims (prostitutes; rent-boys; addicts; the mentally ill) that Sinclair really engages the reader's sympathy.

Parts of the book have inevitably dated (the Silvertown memorial?? - presumably topical in Thatcher's last years as Prime Minister), and Sinclair's political satire in "Art of the State" and "Isle of Doges" is unashamedly heavy-handed (though I did love the vision of Dennis Thatcher as the Cerne Giant, naked and brandishing a golf club ...). There is no doubt that this "novel", even more than most of Sinclair's books, makes very considerable demands on the reader. All the same, it's worth making this trip downriver.

All Over the Map, 21 Jan 2003
I picked up this book for a number of reasons: primarily, I was intrigued by the concept of a novel comprised of twelve stories which would reveal a gritty, dark side of London's docklands. (I'm not a Londoner, nor have I spent a great deal of time there, but I am drawn to fiction about it for some reason.) I have to admit I was also impressed with the plethora of effusive praise from the British press on the jacket. Having read the first three stories, I have now set it aside, unlikely to return to it. Why? Well, it all starts and ends with Sinclair's style. Had I known beforehand that he is a poet, I probably would have avoided the book. My experience with poets is that their prose style tends to be overly ornate. Some find this wholly delightful, but it generally leaves me deeply unmoved.

I liked the notion of what Sinclair was trying to do in tying the Thames to Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and mixing it all up with a critique of Thatcherite policies and the the capitalist assault on the underclass. He's clearly a writer with a political viewpoint who absorbs his cultural surroundings and infuse them back into his writing. Unfortunately, the connections aren't always visible, and worse, the stories aren't particularly interesting. There are flashes here and there of something, and clearly Sinclair has masses of knowledge and skill, but it's hard to find any cohesion to it all. The reviewer at The New York Times put it rather well in saying, "The book is a tremendous pillar of words, not all of them making direct sense and not trying to." It's writing one can appreciate, but not really enjoy, and since I have stacks of other unread books waiting for me, I'll put this one aside-perhaps forever.

Sinclair's Splendid Smoke Opera, 12 Jan 2002
I think Michael Moorcock coined the phrase 'Smoke Opera' to describe the raft of "London" books, both fiction and non-fiction, which have been published in the last few years and reaching some kind of culmination with that great work of fiction Ackroyd's "London: A Biography". Downriver remains my favourite Sinclair novel and I can't recommend it highly enough. If you want real substance, a sense of value which you get from a Victorian classic, with the sense of street suss you expect from the latest junkista. It's very persuasive writing. Like Mother London, you have to take the writer's authority on trust, because this isn't a standard modernist text, but it is so thoroughly rewarding, you will not regret giving him that trust. These are very substantial books indeed, likely to outlast most of their contemporaries! Downriver will run and run! Twelve interconnecting narratives. Twelve times the value of the average Martin Amis! I originally bought this because Laurie Taylor said it was the best value for money to take on holiday. He was right.

Rich and deep, 14 Jul 2001
This is the best of all the London books and could be one of the best novels of the past forty or fifty years! It is written on dozens of levels and can be reread for fresh insights, humour and general brilliance. Wonderful book. Honestly, most other stuff seems pretty thin in comparison.

This and Mother London are the best, 20 Mar 2001
I read this because I read somewhere (Evening Standard ?) that this and Mother London were the two best novels about London. Together -- and they are very different 'reads' on the city although often linked together -- they do make a monumental picture of a living, richly textured capital. Other writers never seem to get as thoroughly involved with their material as Sinclair and Moorcock who almost seem to think the city IS them. That is, where a writer like Martin Amis will really be writing about himself in some way and his responses to what he sees, Sinclair and Moorcock seem to ABSORB themselves in the city -- accepting it, lock, stock and occasionally smoking barrel -- and celebrating it. That celebratory note is what unites the books. This is not your usual wimp's response to the Terrors and Pitfalls of the Big City. This is I LIKE IT HERE, CRAP AND ALL. The mocking lyricism is another thing which sometimes echoes across both books. These are sophisticated writers, but they are writers of passion and they are both romantic writers in the best, most intelligent sense. Impatient with orthodoxy, suspicious of received ideas, they go and look at everything for themselves and bring us back their reports. You can't ask for better than that. You do get better than that, because you get some glorious writing and wonderful characters. Downriver is constructed as twelve interlocking narratives and has a rather monumental Victorian structure to it. It feels a bit like the Tower of London, too. Mother London in contrast is the Kew Tropical Plant House with shafts of light falling forever unexpectedly on things we hadn't noticed before. Downriver is also full of things we hadn't noticed before and I am now re-reading it because I am discovering more things I hadn't noticed the first time! This is a Chinese box of delights and Mother London is, if you like, an Albert Memorial of delights. Together they show that English fiction has not lost sight of a larger contextual universe while examining local life-forms. In spite of being about one specific city, they refute the impression of the modern English novel as provincial or, at best, regional in its focus. I can't recommend them too enthusiastically. Both these great books are built to last. JB

I'm lost, 07 May 2002
So that's what it was all about ... I've just read the synopsis. Locally, every sentence or indeed every paragraph made sense. They just didn't seem to add up to anything like a story that made sense. Characters come and go. Storylines come and go. Nevertheless, it was oddly enjoyable, with a fine sense of place, and wonderful vivid language.

A breather from the old confrontier, 07 Jan 2002
This feels like Sinclair deciding it was time he got out into the country for a bit and put some ancestral mud on his boots. You get the impression from the tone that, looking back on Mother London's silhouette, he thinks he might have made a serious mistake. This is a bit like the Young Ones on Summer Holiday -- a big double decker bus wandering around the Welsh borders full of people who don't really belong there. I loved it. But then Sinclair is my man. He's even better than Moorcock or Ackroyd or Kersh or all the others. I enjoyed the gingerly relationship with the natural world but I bet Sinclair will be glad to be back in the city. He is turned on by Hawksmoor, not hawks. Give yourself a real treat. Full strength stuff by one of Britain's best.

As Intense as a you can take it, 23 Jun 2001
This book is intense. It reads like the automatic writing of an obsessive. The references explode outward like a firework but the text is always forced back to the subject. The writing is unusual but very very powerful. It's hard to look away from the story and there is a depth here that very few writers could match. This book clearly contains a great deal of research. It cannot be easily described. (But oooh it's good).

Sinclair the novelist returns, on cracking form, 19 Jun 2001
I was put off starting this, the first formal novel he's committed for ages, by a dismissive review by some misbegotten hack in one of the broadsheets; 'He's lost it', the substance.

I shouldn't have worried. Lost? Hell, he just got here! This is the full purple microdot and no messing. The moment the town of Hay-on-wye falls in his sights and the bile glands lock-and-load, you know he's really on. A ranting intensity which recalls, but is utterly unlike, the hynotic tones of Burroughs. A kvetching, obsessive exploration of his Welshness, a billious assault on the aforementioned hamlet, a myriad conspiracy theories, some well-kent faces from 'White Chappel' and 'Radon Daughters' and walk-ons for Howard Marks and the ghost of Ritchie Manic.

Like a good bender it all passes in a hilarious, terrifying blur, and you're left gingerly piecing it all together in retrospect. It's too soon to know, but certainly I'd place this up there with his best. And perhaps the strands here are even more intricately woven, the comedy blacker and more knockabout and the rolling boil of the rhetoric even more intense than ever before.

Stand aside for the undisputed one-and-only. Right here, right now, no-one does it better. In fact, no-one does it at all. "You can't dig this, you can't dig nothing, you want the real thing, or you just talkin'?"

Brilliant, 26 Apr 2001
Not much I can add to the professional reviews. This is a brilliant, enjoyable, funny, quirky book by one of Britain's finest writers. Enjoy!

Types on your eyeballs with a hot needle, 08 Nov 2008
Unlike the first three of the London Books (forgotten) Classics series I had never heard of Robert Westerby or this book Wide Boys Never Work. Westerby it seems started life as a gritty London author of street literature who finished up screenwriting for Uncle Walt in California. He wrote this story of a disaffected provincial factory worker getting wrapped up with a seedy London crime gang at a ridiclously young age and as Iain Sinclair who wrote the quirky intro and end notes he 'types on your eyeballs with a hot needle'. It's good. Westerby was an angry young man when the accepted angry young men were angry young babies.

Frequently exasperating, but Sinclair's shaggy dog story has a unique dark poetry, 04 Mar 2007
When Angela Carter no less, whose own work couldn't exactly be described as conventional, is quoted on this book's back cover blurb describing it as "a great, strange [...] fiction about London that follows its own logic", well, I suppose we can't say we haven't been warned. Often more anti-novel than novel, Sinclair's relentlessly downbeat low-life tale has little in the way of plot and makes few concessions to the reader as it meanders its way through the East End of London, as polluted and silt-heavy with the weight of history as the river it describes. Fascinatingly, Sinclair himself seems well aware of the reader's likely reaction, summed up in a fictitious Editor's (self-referential) response to the novel's supposed first draft - "Who is 'I'? ....Too compressed. What slaughter? What psycopath? What nickname?". "What nickname?" goes pretty much to the root of the reader's problem: Sinclair is an inveterate and unashamed namedropper, with his text's cultural referents being too dense and numerous for any single reader to have much chance of catching them all. For example, on a randomly chosen page from the last of his twelve tales, he invokes Joe Orton (fair enough, heard of him), Douglas Bader (sorry, no), Max Roach (vaguely ... a drummer, maybe??) and Michael Sandle (sorry, really haven't the foggiest). Well, call me thick, but it's nice not to have to consult Wikipedia more than once per page. And a lot of the references are just going to be lost on those of us not privileged to live in the Capital: maybe it's because I'm not a Londoner...

So, why bother? Because when Sinclair really finds his form in these twelve murky tales, he is on fire with a dark poetry which is quite unlike anything else in recent British literature. This is particularly true of the darkest of the book's sections, "Horse Spittle" (featuring the disappearance and presumed murder of a nurse turned prostitute), "Eisenbahnangst" (with its chilling Freudian deconstruction of Tenniel's famous illustrations for Lewis Carroll's "Alice Through the Looking-Glass"), and "Prima Donna", which describes Sinclair's supposed encounter with a disturbing character who has a troubling obsession with the victims of Jack the Ripper.

The book's twelve sections essentially narrate the wanderings of a second-hand-book-seller turned writer called (yes, you guessed it) Iain Sinclair, in the ever-shifting and thoroughly unreliable riverine territory of Margaret Thatcher's London Docklands. Although many of the characters he encounters are unashamed grotesques, it is in his portrayal of society's victims (prostitutes; rent-boys; addicts; the mentally ill) that Sinclair really engages the reader's sympathy.

Parts of the book have inevitably dated (the Silvertown memorial?? - presumably topical in Thatcher's last years as Prime Minister), and Sinclair's political satire in "Art of the State" and "Isle of Doges" is unashamedly heavy-handed (though I did love the vision of Dennis Thatcher as the Cerne Giant, naked and brandishing a golf club ...). There is no doubt that this "novel", even more than most of Sinclair's books, makes very considerable demands on the reader. All the same, it's worth making this trip downriver.

All Over the Map, 21 Jan 2003
I picked up this book for a number of reasons: primarily, I was intrigued by the concept of a novel comprised of twelve stories which would reveal a gritty, dark side of London's docklands. (I'm not a Londoner, nor have I spent a great deal of time there, but I am drawn to fiction about it for some reason.) I have to admit I was also impressed with the plethora of effusive praise from the British press on the jacket. Having read the first three stories, I have now set it aside, unlikely to return to it. Why? Well, it all starts and ends with Sinclair's style. Had I known beforehand that he is a poet, I probably would have avoided the book. My experience with poets is that their prose style tends to be overly ornate. Some find this wholly delightful, but it generally leaves me deeply unmoved.

I liked the notion of what Sinclair was trying to do in tying the Thames to Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and mixing it all up with a critique of Thatcherite policies and the the capitalist assault on the underclass. He's clearly a writer with a political viewpoint who absorbs his cultural surroundings and infuse them back into his writing. Unfortunately, the connections aren't always visible, and worse, the stories aren't particularly interesting. There are flashes here and there of something, and clearly Sinclair has masses of knowledge and skill, but it's hard to find any cohesion to it all. The reviewer at The New York Times put it rather well in saying, "The book is a tremendous pillar of words, not all of them making direct sense and not trying to." It's writing one can appreciate, but not really enjoy, and since I have stacks of other unread books waiting for me, I'll put this one aside-perhaps forever.

Sinclair's Splendid Smoke Opera, 12 Jan 2002
I think Michael Moorcock coined the phrase 'Smoke Opera' to describe the raft of "London" books, both fiction and non-fiction, which have been published in the last few years and reaching some kind of culmination with that great work of fiction Ackroyd's "London: A Biography". Downriver remains my favourite Sinclair novel and I can't recommend it highly enough. If you want real substance, a sense of value which you get from a Victorian classic, with the sense of street suss you expect from the latest junkista. It's very persuasive writing. Like Mother London, you have to take the writer's authority on trust, because this isn't a standard modernist text, but it is so thoroughly rewarding, you will not regret giving him that trust. These are very substantial books indeed, likely to outlast most of their contemporaries! Downriver will run and run! Twelve interconnecting narratives. Twelve times the value of the average Martin Amis! I originally bought this because Laurie Taylor said it was the best value for money to take on holiday. He was right.

Rich and deep, 14 Jul 2001
This is the best of all the London books and could be one of the best novels of the past forty or fifty years! It is written on dozens of levels and can be reread for fresh insights, humour and general brilliance. Wonderful book. Honestly, most other stuff seems pretty thin in comparison.

This and Mother London are the best, 20 Mar 2001
I read this because I read somewhere (Evening Standard ?) that this and Mother London were the two best novels about London. Together -- and they are very different 'reads' on the city although often linked together -- they do make a monumental picture of a living, richly textured capital. Other writers never seem to get as thoroughly involved with their material as Sinclair and Moorcock who almost seem to think the city IS them. That is, where a writer like Martin Amis will really be writing about himself in some way and his responses to what he sees, Sinclair and Moorcock seem to ABSORB themselves in the city -- accepting it, lock, stock and occasionally smoking barrel -- and celebrating it. That celebratory note is what unites the books. This is not your usual wimp's response to the Terrors and Pitfalls of the Big City. This is I LIKE IT HERE, CRAP AND ALL. The mocking lyricism is another thing which sometimes echoes across both books. These are sophisticated writers, but they are writers of passion and they are both romantic writers in the best, most intelligent sense. Impatient with orthodoxy, suspicious of received ideas, they go and look at everything for themselves and bring us back their reports. You can't ask for better than that. You do get better than that, because you get some glorious writing and wonderful characters. Downriver is constructed as twelve interlocking narratives and has a rather monumental Victorian structure to it. It feels a bit like the Tower of London, too. Mother London in contrast is the Kew Tropical Plant House with shafts of light falling forever unexpectedly on things we hadn't noticed before. Downriver is also full of things we hadn't noticed before and I am now re-reading it because I am discovering more things I hadn't noticed the first time! This is a Chinese box of delights and Mother London is, if you like, an Albert Memorial of delights. Together they show that English fiction has not lost sight of a larger contextual universe while examining local life-forms. In spite of being about one specific city, they refute the impression of the modern English novel as provincial or, at best, regional in its focus. I can't recommend them too enthusiastically. Both these great books are built to last. JB

"From a drop of water, a logician can infer...an Atlantic or a Niagara.", 07 Dec 2006
Published in 1878, this first Sherlock Holmes story is a delightful curiosity, rather than a finely developed novel. Here Dr. Watson, just released from the British army and recovering from serious wounds from the second Afghan war, meets Sherlock Holmes for the first time. Both have been looking for someone to share the rent--at 221B Baker Street. Holmes, without a "real" career, spends considerable time experimenting in a hospital chemistry lab and interviewing people who come to the apartment. Watson soon discovers that Holmes is a detective consultant, working with police detectives and private detectives alike.

Written before Doyle had fully developed his skills as a mystery novelist, this novel divides in half. In the first part, which begins around 1880, Holmes helps investigate the murder of Enoch J. Drebber of Cleveland, Ohio, apparently poisoned in an abandoned house. A tall stranger has been seen in the neighborhood, and some clues have been planted at the crime scene. Later, Drebber's traveling companion is killed. Holmes, however, manages to solve both cases by the halfway point in the book.

The second half of the novel flashes back to 1847. John Ferrier, one of twenty-one people in a caravan, is traveling through "an arid and repulsive desert" in the American west when the caravan runs out of food and water. Ferrier and a small girl, the only survivors, search for water until they collapse. Rescued by Brigham Young and a wagon train of Mormons on their way to found their city, Ferrier, in exchange for food and water, agrees to convert and become a good Mormon. Years later, when Ferrier is a successful rancher and Lucy has fallen in love with a Gentile, the elders of the church demand that Ferrier agree to wed Lucy to a member of the church, a decision he resists.

These seemingly unrelated stories eventually overlap, but Doyle's incomplete and inaccurate knowledge of Mormon beliefs show his deliberate attempt to capitalize on the mysteries of the "wild west" and of Mormonism for the sake of his story, now quite dated. The ending consists of Holmes simply ticking off the clues which have led him to solve the murders and capture the murderer, not a dramatic or exciting climax. Watson is seen as a soldier-hero and doctor, and not as a bumbling side-kick to Holmes, who is shown here as a decidedly odd and pompous man, less "clever" than he becomes in time. Fun to read and interesting primarily because it is the first Holmes mystery. Mary Whipple

Wonderfully entertaining, 08 Mar 2004
It is 1878 and Doctor John Watson, his health damaged by his experiences with the British Army in Afghanistan during the Second Anglo-Afghan War, is looking for lodgings in the great city of London. It seems fortuitous, when a mutual friend introduces him to another who needs someone to share costs on a suite on Baker Street, but this other man is quite an eccentric. Sherlock Holmes has bent his life and education towards turning himself into the premier detective.

Watson can hardly credit Holmes's claims of what a first-class detective can do. But, when a note arrives from a Scotland Yard detective, inviting Holmes to consult on a particularly mysterious murder, Watson soon finds himself carried along by Holmes, watching his new friend's powers unravel a seemingly inscrutable knot. The game is afoot, and Holmes needs to solve a murder, and bring a murderer to justice.

This fascinating book was first published in 1887, and was the very first Sherlock Holmes story. In it we get to see the first meeting of Holmes and Watson, and hear Holmes explain his methods in detail. If you are a fan of murder mysteries, then this is definitely a book that you should not miss.

The center part of this story revolves around the actions of the Mormon Church in Salt Lake City, Utah. Author Arthur Conan Doyle had a tendency to "wing" the details of his story, and his treatment of the Mormons shows a certain carelessness in how he presented them. Therefore, if you are a Mormon, you will most likely find this book offensive.

But, that said, this is a wonderfully entertaining story that is sure to please most every mystery fan. And, if you are a fan of Sherlock Holmes, then you must read this book! It's great.

The First Sherlock Holmes Story, 15 Jul 2002
Although it's not the best written of the Holmes stories, "A Study in Scarlet" is most definitely my favorite. I love the description of Holmes' character in this book and the way Arthur Conan Doyle begins the relationship between Holmes and Watson is beyond brilliant. It's positively indescribable. The only thing I don't like about this book is the way in which it is written. The book is divided into two parts. In the first half, Holmes and Watson meet and then investigate a crime. The second half tells the history of the people involved in the crime. Part II is good although Holmes and Watson are not in it, but the format is somewhat confusing on the first read because it appears that Doyle is beginning an entirely new story without finishing the first one. But overall this book is a fine addition to the Sherlock Holmes canon and I would highly recommend it.

Enter the world of Sherlock Holmes, 29 Dec 2000
"A Study in Scarlet" is the first of the Sherlock Holmes series and therefore gives the reader the perfect opportunity to progressively befriend the famous detective at the same time as the good Dr Watson does. Throughout the course of the book you will marvel at the numerous skills that Holmes has so painfully striven to attain through arduous hard work during his life, and watch as he uses them in practice. As the mystery of the case develops, so does Dr Watson's friendship with Holmes, and the reader finds himself in the same position as Watson; baffled and confused as to how all the pieces of the puzzle which Holmes has so cleverly found, will ever fit together. After reading this book I found myself envious of all the remarkable talents that Holmes possesses, and every time he proposed a new theory, I could not rest until he explained the seemingly simple pathways he used to arrive at his conclusion. This book provides an excellent introduction to the world of Sherlock Holmes, it was the first of this series of books that I bought, and will certainly not be the last. Experience the astonishing mind of perhaps the greatest detective created by reading "A Study In Scarlet".

Frequently exasperating, but Sinclair's shaggy dog story has a unique dark poetry, 04 Mar 2007
When Angela Carter no less, whose own work couldn't exactly be described as conventional, is quoted on this book's back cover blurb describing it as "a great, strange [...] fiction about London that follows its own logic", well, I suppose we can't say we haven't been warned. Often more anti-novel than novel, Sinclair's relentlessly downbeat low-life tale has little in the way of plot and makes few concessions to the reader as it meanders its way through the East End of London, as polluted and silt-heavy with the weight of history as the river it describes. Fascinatingly, Sinclair himself seems well aware of the reader's likely reaction, summed up in a fictitious Editor's (self-referential) response to the novel's supposed first draft - "Who is 'I'? ....Too compressed. What slaughter? What psycopath? What nickname?". "What nickname?" goes pretty much to the root of the reader's problem: Sinclair is an inveterate and unashamed namedropper, with his text's cultural referents being too dense and numerous for any single reader to have much chance of catching them all. For example, on a randomly chosen page from the last of his twelve tales, he invokes Joe Orton (fair enough, heard of him), Douglas Bader (sorry, no), Max Roach (vaguely ... a drummer, maybe??) and Michael Sandle (sorry, really haven't the foggiest). Well, call me thick, but it's nice not to have to consult Wikipedia more than once per page. And a lot of the references are just going to be lost on those of us not privileged to live in the Capital: maybe it's because I'm not a Londoner...

So, why bother? Because when Sinclair really finds his form in these twelve murky tales, he is on fire with a dark poetry which is quite unlike anything else in recent British literature. This is particularly true of the darkest of the book's sections, "Horse Spittle" (featuring the disappearance and presumed murder of a nurse turned prostitute), "Eisenbahnangst" (with its chilling Freudian deconstruction of Tenniel's famous illustrations for Lewis Carroll's "Alice Through the Looking-Glass"), and "Prima Donna", which describes Sinclair's supposed encounter with a disturbing character who has a troubling obsession with the victims of Jack the Ripper.

The book's twelve sections essentially narrate the wanderings of a second-hand-book-seller turned writer called (yes, you guessed it) Iain Sinclair, in the ever-shifting and thoroughly unreliable riverine territory of Margaret Thatcher's London Docklands. Although many of the characters he encounters are unashamed grotesques, it is in his portrayal of society's victims (prostitutes; rent-boys; addicts; the mentally ill) that Sinclair really engages the reader's sympathy.

Parts of the book have inevitably dated (the Silvertown memorial?? - presumably topical in Thatcher's last years as Prime Minister), and Sinclair's political satire in "Art of the State" and "Isle of Doges" is unashamedly heavy-handed (though I did love the vision of Dennis Thatcher as the Cerne Giant, naked and brandishing a golf club ...). There is no doubt that this "novel", even more than most of Sinclair's books, makes very considerable demands on the reader. All the same, it's worth making this trip downriver.

All Over the Map, 21 Jan 2003
I picked up this book for a number of reasons: primarily, I was intrigued by the concept of a novel comprised of twelve stories which would reveal a gritty, dark side of London's docklands. (I'm not a Londoner, nor have I spent a great deal of time there, but I am drawn to fiction about it for some reason.) I have to admit I was also impressed with the plethora of effusive praise from the British press on the jacket. Having read the first three stories, I have now set it aside, unlikely to return to it. Why? Well, it all starts and ends with Sinclair's style. Had I known beforehand that he is a poet, I probably would have avoided the book. My experience with poets is that their prose style tends to be overly ornate. Some find this wholly delightful, but it generally leaves me deeply unmoved.

I liked the notion of what Sinclair was trying to do in tying the Thames to Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and mixing it all up with a critique of Thatcherite policies and the the capitalist assault on the underclass. He's clearly a writer with a political viewpoint who absorbs his cultural surroundings and infuse them back into his writing. Unfortunately, the connections aren't always visible, and worse, the stories aren't particularly interesting. There are flashes here and there of something, and clearly Sinclair has masses of knowledge and skill, but it's hard to find any cohesion to it all. The reviewer at The New York Times put it rather well in saying, "The book is a tremendous pillar of words, not all of them making direct sense and not trying to." It's writing one can appreciate, but not really enjoy, and since I have stacks of other unread books waiting for me, I'll put this one aside-perhaps forever.

Sinclair's Splendid Smoke Opera, 12 Jan 2002
I think Michael Moorcock coined the phrase 'Smoke Opera' to describe the raft of "London" books, both fiction and non-fiction, which have been published in the last few years and reaching some kind of culmination with