FRANK THOMAS – Sherlock Holmes and the Treasure Train. Pinnacle, paperback original, March 1985.

   Frank Thomas was — just in case you’re wondering if he might have been — the movie actor who gained considerable fame playing the lead role in the Tom Corbett, Space Cadet series on the small screen, a role so well known that I’m sure it stayed with him the rest of his life. After his TV days were over, though, he also became an expert on the game of bridge and (most relevant to us here) a mystery novelist.

   Besides a handful of short stories about Sherlock Holmes, Thomas wrote four novels about the character, of which this was the third. Watson, of course, in all of them as well, as the purported narrator, and so is Mycroft Holmes – at least in Treasure Train – but (as far as I recall) never onstage. He’s only referred to, and as it so happens, quite often.

   There are a couple of other short cases to deal with at first, but the crux of the matter of hand is the theft of £500,000 in gold that has been stolen from a well-guarded and armored railroad car as it’s being transported across the English countryside. If it sounds like an “impossible crime” to you, it did to me at first as well, but Holmes makes quick work of that part of the mystery, alas.

   The problem, then — having become one of whodunit, not how — loses momentum quickly as the intricacies of international finance and banking come into play. Thomas does his best to keep things interesting through the middle of the book, but I found my eyelids getting heavier and heavier throughout the denser chapters, of which there were, unfortunately, too many.

   Thomas also does his best to make the reader believe his characters are the same as those created by Conan Doyle, but while solidly done, he never convinced me. Two gentlemen. good detectives each, with the same names and outer mannerisms as the real Holmes and Watson? Yes, I found myself going along with that, but I also regret to report that clones, even above average ones, are seldom little more than stand-by replacements for the real thing.

      The Sherlock Holmes novels by Frank Thomas —

Sherlock Holmes and the Golden Bird. Pinnacle, pbo, 1979.

Sherlock Holmes and the Sacred Sword. Pinnacle, pbo, 1980.

Sherlock Holmes and the Treasure Train. Pinnacle, pbo, 1985.
Sherlock Holmes and the Masquerade Murders. Medallion, pbo, 1986.