ROBERT LEE HALL – Exit Sherlock Holmes. Scribner’s, hardcover, 1977. Playboy Press, paperback, 1979.

   Now it can be told. The famous retirement as a beekeeper on the Sussex Downs was but a pretense, part of Sherlock Holmes’ strategy employed against his nemesis of evil, the notorious Professor Moriarty, who not surprisingly also did not perish at Reichenbach Falls.

   In all the cases previously recorded for us, Watson never reveals much information about the early years of his famous friend. In fact, for most of their life together he never greatly inquired.

   However, in the great detective’s finally days Watson finally learned the whole story. Through a legacy left him by his grandmother, a tin box of Watson’s writings stored away until year, Robert Lee Hall now claims to be able to reveal the truth.

   Watson has the spotlight for most of the book, for Holmes has mysteriously disappeared during the growing international crisis foreshadowing World War I. With the able assistance of the now adult Wiggins, he does quite well as a detective, discovering for the first time Holmes’ secret laboratory and the other deceptions perpetrated by Holmes over the years.

   Loose ends from many tales are deftly tied together, and all the mystery surrounding the life of Sherlock Holmes is magnificently cleared away by the revelations preceding the final confrontation scene in this book, revelations which, I promise you, are designed to test your imagination to the utmost.

   A must for Holmesians, but if it makes any difference, I didn’t believe a word of it. Nor could I put it down.

— Reprinted from The MYSTERY FANcier, Vol. 1, No. 5, September 1977.


[UPDATE] 04-19-11.   I don’t know if it should be surprising, but at this point in time, nearly 33 years after writing this review, I have no idea what the revelations were that I referred to in that next-to-last paragraph.

   This was one of the first mystery novels able to use Sherlock Holmes as a character without the Doyle estate’s permission (as I understand it). Although I may have missed a few, here are a few earlier ones:

Ellery Queen [Paul W. Fairman], A Study in Terror, Lancer, 1966.
Michael & Mollie Hardwick, The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes, Mayflower (UK), 1970.
Nicholas Meyer, The Seven-Per-Cent Solution, Dutton, 1974.
Philip José Farmer, The Adventure of the Peerless Peer, Aspen, 1974.
Frank Thomas, Sherlock Holmes Bridge Detective Returns, Thomas, 1975.
Don R. Bensen, Sherlock Holmes in New York, Ballantine, 1976.
Richard L. Boyer, The Giant Rat of Sumatra, Warner, 1976.
Nicholas Meyer, The West End Horror, Dutton, 1976.
Austin Mitchelson & Nicholas Utechin, The Earthquake Machine, Belmont, 1976
    ”     ”     Hellbirds, Belmont, 1976.

   After this, though, the deluge.