Holmes on the Range

I thought the whole title and premise was very clever, and I love Holmes so I picked it up and found an author after my own heart. This is one heck of a book, incredibly fun and witty and written in cowboy-speak so well you will be conversin' with cattlehands in no time. The story keeps you riveted and the writing keeps you entralled. Did I mention this was incredibly fun? I hear there is some dispute as to why Steve's name is on the book instead of Otto's. I reckon there will be a thrashin' a' comin'. Buy it, and devour it. You will thank me.

Steve Hockensmith's debut novel "Holmes on the Range" is an amusing Conan Doyle inspired mystery set in the untamed frontier of 1893 Montana. The book chronicles the exploits of the Amlingmeyer brothers Gustav and Otto, known as Old Red and Big Red. The brothers were itinerant cowboys, a result of a series of tragedies that wiped out their entire German immigrant family in rural Kansas. Before flood waters and smallpox decimated the Amlingmeyer family, the illiterate Gustav set out to make a living as a cow puncher. The younger Otto, the narrator of this tale, received some education and worked as a granary clerk. A resulting flood wiped out the whole family, save Otto, who joined up with his brother on the range. They were currently employed as dollar a day cowhands on the Bar VR cattle ranch in Montana. When they accidently came across the apparently stampeded body of what was believed to be the ranch manager named Perkins, curiosity got the better of them. Gustav, a huge fan of Sherlock Holmes, began to investigate the death in typical Holmes fashion looking for clues. The ranch was now being run by a pair of unsavory and underhanded brothers the McPhersons, Uly and Spider. The ranch soon became the locus of a new wider array of suspects into the strange occurrences at the ranch. The owner of the ranch, the English Duke of Balmoral arrived with his entourage just days after the unfortunate demise of the manager Perkins. This arrival was soon followed by the shooting death of top ranch hand Boudreaux, an albino Negro, under some very queer circumstances. Old Red (Gustav) aided by Big Red (Otto) were allowed to shirk their ranch duties by the Duke in order to investigate the crimes. The Duke, an inveterate gambler had as his motivation, a 200 pound wager he made with his young associate Brackwell, son of an English earl. The Duke bet that Old Red and Big Red couldn't provide a plausible explanation for the mysterious deaths before the arrival of the authorities. Using Holmesian deductive reasoning the Amlingmeyer brothers eventually found the answers to the mysteries on the Bar VR ranch. Author Hockensmith has a bright future should he continue to write about the exploits of Old Red and Big Red.

This book makes the reader smile on every page. It is not laugh out loud funny, but consistently amusing throughout. The narrator, one of the two brothers who are at the center of the yarn, is a comedian - if he does say so himself. The Amlinger brothers, Big Red (narrator) and Old Red, are cowboys. Big Red has read Sherlock Holmes stories to his older brother who can not read and Old Red has taken them to heart. The brothers go to work on a ranch known for its nefarious bosses. A body is found. Apparently, the man was killed in a stampede. Old Red doubts it and the Holmesian hunt is on...Old Red goes deducifyin'. This is a true mix of a western and a Sherlock Holmes type Mystery. Mr. Hockensmith catches the flavor of both tremendously with just the right amount of tongue-in-cheek attitude so the depiction of neither genre is "over the top". There are more amusing, and apt, metaphors in this book than any other I have ever read. They were amusing to read and I found myself looking forward to the next one, which was never a long wait. The characters, especially the brothers are very good. The supporting cast varies from drovers to evil foremen to an English duke, who, of course has met Holmes and hates him, and a damsel. Lastly, the plot was a good one. Like Holmes, Old Red is always a step ahead of his brother/Watson and the reader. He, of course, wraps it all up in the end. There are a number of Holmes knock-offs and books about Holmes after retirement, etc. out there. This is not one. Holmes is merely Old Red's hero. Mr. Hockensmith then concocts a Holmes-like mystery told in a western twang. Holmes fans will not be offended since he is only an inspiration to this amateur sleuth. Highly recommended. This is a decent mystery that light-heartedly combines the features of Sherlock Holmes and dime westerns.

What a fun book! And a clever idea well done: two cowpoke brothers as Watson and Holmes in the old west! :) Owen Wister (The Virginian) and Conan Doyle (Study in Scarlet) come together in an American original. Cowboy brothers reprise Watson and Holmes solving two murders, one by gun and one by cattle stampede no less. All the classic western elements are there: English owners, scurvy outlaw foreman, and the bunkhouse gang. What kept this tale moving was the narrative by "Big Red" (the Watson) seeing his brother emerge from being a "hand" (cowhand) to being a "mind" (detective) working out a truly intricate plot. Quite moving really and a heckuva good read!

At last, Steve Hockensmith has given lovers of both the "traditional" English country house mystery and of action in the wide-open spaces of the American West their first real taste of these two great tastes that go great together since Sir Arthur himself did it with "A Study in Scarlet." The allusion above is not intended to be tongue-in-cheek. Rather, it's meant as an expression of admiration for a writer who has taken something old and made it new again, turning the phrase, "imitation is the sincerest form of flattery" completely on its ear. Steve Hockensmith's Amlingmeyer brothers aren't just Holmes and Watson duded up like Hopalong Cassidy (that dubious and hilarious distinction is left for another of the characters in this first novel) and dropped into a scene in Next-To-Nowhere, Nevada. Mr. Hockensmith has done his homework, and these two brothers, in addition to the other hands on the Cantlemere Ranche are the genuine item: *cowboys*. What Mr. Hockensmith has done is neither pastiche, nor outright thievery. Rather, this is a tribute, a loving homage not just to Doyle, but to early writers of Western literature such as Bret Harte, Owen Wister, Max Brand, Zane Grey, and others. What makes this book unique though, is the original voice in which Mr. Hockensmith chooses to tell his tale. Otto Amlingmeyer, while every bit a strapping late-19th century American plains-dweller, takes you by the elbow and walks you through his story, mixing homilies, metaphores and similes in the course of telling it in such a manner that in the hands of a lesser craftsman, might ring false, even cliched. Not so with Hockensmith's work. On the contrary, the realism of Otto's speech and descriptions is a large portion of what gives this book its zest. There's more, though. Mix in a plot that lopes along at a goodly pace, an English peer and his hangers-on practicing their own distinctive brand of class consciousness (which contrasts interestingly with the native-born racism of at least one of the other cowhands on the Cantlemere), a resultant bit of 19th century class warfare, a pair of villains who smell as badly as they act, a direct tie-in with one Holmes story, and oblique references to several others, and you've got one whopping good, highly recommended, read. So move over, Doyle, Harte, Wister, Brand and Grey. There's a new sheriff in town. I for one can't wait for his next installment.