Format: Hardcover, 320 pages
Release Date: June 11, 2019
Publisher: Minotaur Books
Source: Library
Genre: Mystery & Detective / Historical
In the third book of this critically-acclaimed series, Sherlock Holmes' daughter faces a new unsolvable mystery with spies and a threat to the crown.
Joanna and the Watson's receive an unexpected visitor to 221b Baker Street during a nocturnal storm. A rain-drenched Dr. Alexander Verner arrives with a most harrowing tale.
Verner has just returned from an unsettling trip to see a patient who he believes is being held against his will. Joanna quickly realizes that Verner's patient is a high-ranking Englishman who the Germans have taken captive to pry vital information about England’s military strategies for the Great War. The man is revealed to be Alistair Ainsworth, a cryptographer involved in the highest level of national security.
The police are frantic to find Ainsworth before the Germans can use him to decode all of England’s undeciphered messages. Ainsworth must be found at all costs and Joanna and the Watson's might be the only ones who can connect the clues to find him.
USA Today bestselling author Leonard Goldberg returns with another puzzling case for the daughter of Sherlock Holmes to unravel in this exciting mystery sure to be enjoyed by fans of Sherlock Holmes as well as the works of Laurie R. King and Charles Finch.
The Disappearance of Alistair Ainsworth is the third installment in author Leonard Goldberg's The Daughter of Sherlock Holmes Mysteries. While this book focuses on Joanna Blalock, daughter of Sherlock Holmes, it is actually Dr. James Watson Junior who is doing the story telling. On a rainy night in November, 1915, Joanna, John, and former Sherlock Holmes biographer, Dr. Watson, receive a curious visitor. Dr. Alexander Verner claims he saw a distressed patient who wrote HELP on his stomach. It seems that this will be another 3-pipe problem (a particularly complex or challenging problem or puzzle.)
"When a fact is taken for granted, it often loses it's importance."
Verner, who was unable to get his alleged captors to take him to the nearest hospital for treatment, believes the man is
being held against his will. The
kidnapped man (Alistair Ainsworth) is a highly placed cryptologist for the British
government and is in possession of many state secrets that must remain
secret. Joanna quickly realizes that the Germans have taken Ainsworth captive
to pry vital information about England’s military strategies for the
Great War. If the Germans find a way to break Alistair's code, they will be nearly unstoppable and England might actually lose the war.
"At times, there's nothing more deceptive than obvious facts."
As the group unravels the clues, it seems that the German’s are always 2 or 3 steps ahead which likely means that someone on the inside is
working for the Germans. But, who would go this far to betray his or her country? Others involved in this mystery are Scotland Yard Inspector Lestrade who is getting used to the fact that Joanna is Sherlock's daughter who has the same drive, and intelligence as her father; Lieutenant Dunn of Naval Intelligence who is allegedly Ainsworth boss; Toby Too, a tracking dog that has been involved in three mysteries now; Emma Ainsworth, Alistair's sister; Roger Marlowe, Geoffrey Montclair, Mary Ellington members of The Admiralty Club; Johnny Blalock, Joanna's 12 year old son; Wiggins, Alfie and Sarah who are part of Joanna's Baker Street Irregulars; and Sir Harold Whitlock, First Sea Lord who always seem to appear whenever national security is at stake.
I dare say that one should have some knowledge of previous installments to understand these characters and how far they've come from Joanna being a skilled nurse to a Private Investigator who is getting more and more support for her work. While each of the stories themselves are standalone, a beginning, a mystery, and an ending, it does seem valuable to me to understand what led Joanna to take this path and how adorable her 12-year old son is in this book. He's a chip off the old Sherlock block.
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