Thu 22 Apr 2021
An Archived Mystery Review by Barry Gardner: MARK FROST – The Six Messiahs.
Posted by Steve under Reviews[6] Comments
MARK FROST – The Six Messiahs. Conan Doyle #2. Morrow, hardcover. 1995. Avon, paperback, 1996.
Frost’s The List of 7 last year was an unexpected pleasure for me. It was a good, old-fashioned thriller rather than a crime novel, a story whose plot wouldn’t have been out of place in the pulps of the early decades of this century. It featured the pre-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (who seems to be bidding to become as popular a lead as his creation) as does this, its sequel. I wonder — are there any figures of our time who will be seen as fascinating enough 60 or 70 years from now to be made heroes in thrillers? I don’t think so.
A decade had passed since the events of the previous book, and the now-famous Doyle is making a tour of the US, accompanied by his younger brother, Innes. During the trip across the Atlantic by steamer a man is murdered, and evidence surfaces regarding the attempted theft of a rare and valuable religious book. Later, in New York, it becomes clear that there is a conspiracy by some very evil and competent people to steal a number of the world’s most revered religious works, to some end as yet unknown.
The above plot summary is wholly inadequate, but it was going to be unless I wanted to give half a page to it. This is another book like its predecessor, a fantastic thriller that’s very well written and very enjoyable if you can take it on its own terms. I can’t with modern thrillers, but I can and did with this. Go figure.
Editorial Update: This was the second and last of only two books in Frost’s series of Conan Doyle adventure thrillers. According to a source I found online: “Mark Frost is an American novelist, screenwriter, director and film producer, best known as a writer for the television series Hill Street Blues and as the co-creator of the television series Twin Peaks.”
April 22nd, 2021 at 7:45 pm
With all due respect to Barry and apologies to his memory, but this was one of the worst pieces of refuse I ever had the misfortune to read.
The portrait of Conan Doyle is total idiocy, the plot complete nonsense, and the frankly it was so bad it colored my views of both HILL STREET BLUES and TWIN PEAKS.
Fantastic is right though. Seldom in my life have I read a book so fantastically amateurish, badly written, stupid, and annoying.
Usually if I don’t like a book I trade it or pass it on to someone else who might like it better. This remains the only book in one piece I ever threw in the trash.
April 22nd, 2021 at 7:48 pm
Um, well. Second opinions are always good!
April 22nd, 2021 at 7:54 pm
I last read this about 1997 when it came out in paperback, that my opinion is still so virulent all these years later says something about what the experience was like for me.
April 23rd, 2021 at 7:49 pm
Two points of view on the same book, quite opposite to each other, by two people I trust. I’m not likely to read this book, either way, having long ago sworn off all books about Holmes, Watson, and/or Doyle not written by the latter.
But I have gone looking for other opinions, and have discovered that both Kirkus and Publishers Weekly liked the book. The reviews on Goodreads are mixed, with a final average somewhere close to the middle. But even those there who liked the book liked the first one better.
David, did you read the first one? If so, what did you think of it?
April 25th, 2021 at 8:51 pm
Bad as it was I forgave LIST OF SEVEN on the grounds it was a first book written by a writer coming out of television and not quite up to the difference in form. This one convinced me I should never have given him a second chance or another one ever again.
This should have been right for me. I love historical mystery, pulps, Holmes pastiche, the whole Steampunk atmosphere, the kind of WILD WILD WEST mix of Nick Carter and James Bond, adventure, the paranormal, but like the first book this is nothing but a poorly researched series of set pieces for a teleplay and not an actual novel.
Frost’s portrait of Conan Doyle shows no sign that he read any of the biographies of the man, or Doyle’s essays, remembrances by family and friends, or the vast amount of available material including a filmed interview that allows you to actually see him move and hear him and get a feeling for the man.
Instead Frost pieces together some minor details (the trip to the States with Innes), rather poor research about the period, and sails off into fantasy land about who Doyle was. THE WILD WILD WEST at its silliest was closer to reality. With a lesser known figure that might not be so bad, but it isn’t like Doyle wasn’t one of the most public figures of his times.
That is fine for screen or television, but not a book.
There are fine novels about Conan Doyle (Arthur and George, and a clever one suggesting he was behind Piltdown Man among them), so it can be done, even with the somewhat Nick Carterish Doc Savage plot of this book.
I should probably admit I have written (and sold though it never got published thanks to an editorial change at the publisher) a novel set in this period back when you did all your research in libraries and I know how relatively easy it is to do extensive research about the smallest detail of the era from the price of cigars to where a gentleman gets his shoes made.
It isn’t as if there is nowhere to turn for this kind of detail, and I consider it the author’s duty to the reader to do the work even if he can’t fit it into the novel and even if he has to fiddle with history or geography to fit his narrative, but the reader should never feel, as he does with Frost, as if the writer doesn’t know and didn’t care enough to find out.
If nothing else you can practically research the entire history of the era from Regency to the Edwardian age with annotated editions of Dickens, Austen, the Brontes, and Sherlock Holmes a period atlas, and one decent history. Others have done all the hard work for you.
So, frankly I resent it when a writer like Frost is just shabby at it and dismisses his readers experience to capitalize on his success in another medium. By all means try another creative outlet, but if you do actually do the work.
These books didn’t do the work, and it showed.
April 25th, 2021 at 9:36 pm
Thanks for filling in the details, David, and then some. It is as I suspected — shoddy background research on part of Frost — but I’m glad to have you confirm it.