I’m not really sure what to make of The Great Game. It has more plots than I like to keep track of, but at least it makes sense without too much deep thinking. After reading the summary on the back of the novel, along with the subtitle of “A Professor Moriarty Novel,” I thought it would be almost exclusively from the viewpoint of Moriarty. Instead, I got very little from the professor until the last half of the novel, and, even then, there are so many characters involved, that Moriarty is just one of an assembled group instead of the star.
Even the title of the novel really has nothing to do with Moriarty. The “Game” involves a young man who eventually needs Moriarty’s help, but unlike the title of Sherlock Holmes stories (“The Case of …”, or something of the like), The Great Game starts off by immediately misleading me into thinking that Moriarty was a player in whatever the game would turn out to be. I mostly understand that the entire purpose of Kurland’s Moriarty novels is to give a wholly new perspective on who the “Napoleon of Crime” may or may not have been meant to be. I expected a criminal mystery, and that is what I received, but I was hoping that Kurland would keep more to the mystery part, and maybe not make it so easy to know how it all would end.
I believe that overall there are eight major characters that make up four distinct, yet connected plots. They are all related to the “game,” but I was annoyed that Kurland needed so many detailed plots to carry out a mystery novel. I felt as though the set up took a great deal longer than it ought to, and by the time the set up was over, I already knew who the villain was and what the general ending would be. I have always thought that the key to a good mystery was to keep readers guessing until the very last page. There should be hints everywhere, but the correct connections of those hints should be known only to the author. And, The Great Game is a mystery novel, just as Doyle’s stories were all good mysteries. This is probably why I was not terribly impressed with Kurland’s novel.
On the other hand, I very much appreciated Kurland’s inclusion of the languages of Europe. Since the novel took place in multiple locations (England, Italy, Austria, and maybe some others), I was glad to see that the languages of these various places were fittingly included in the dialogues between characters who spoke different languages. There’s a charming little scene where Barnett is trying to pay an Italian working on a barge to bring some cushions, and Barnett spoke no Italian, and the Italian man spoke no English. It highlighted the necessity for world travelers to have at least a little knowledge of the language of the country they intend to visit. I enjoyed the descriptions of the end-of-the-century Europe and the hints of crime-fighting technology to come, too. It’s interesting to read about why fingerprints are useful, and to see that in the late 1800s, no one really know that fingerprints are as unique as the people who have them.
I also think that Kurland was spot on with the characters of Holmes, Watson, and Moriarty, perhaps even improved upon them. Moriarty is as brilliant as usual, but I actually got to see the workings of his mind from his own point of view. Holmes, while a little paranoid about Moriarty that can only be expected, is a (mostly) rational, methodical, logical being with a penchant for wanting to always be right. Watson is just the same as I remember: a little bit dense for a man of the medical field, but as stolid a friend as could be hoped for.
I have convinced myself that, at some point, I should read another of Kurland’s Moriarty novels, because maybe The Great Game just didn’t agree with me. In general, I think you cannot discredit an author on the basis of having read one book. There are exceptions, but I will try to keep an open mind, since an open mind can mean a lot more joyful and pleasurable reading in the future. Good luck to Mr. Kurland at our next meeting!
0 comments:
Post a Comment