Review: Petr Kopl's The Final Problem
I greatly enjoyed Kopl's first two Holmes books so was naturally looking forward to the latest.
My reviews of Kopl's A Scandal in Bohemia and The Hound of the Baskervilles can be found here and here respectively. Comic book versions of the Holmes adventures have been done before but the angle that Kopl takes (and what, I think, marks his books out) is to make a specific story the, as it were, headline act and have other stories woven in almost as supporting acts.
For The Final Problem the main supporting acts or adventures are Charles Augustus Milverton and The Empty House (plus other little cameos).
This latest effort takes a slightly more bawdy turn than I remember the others doing. It reaches an almost old-style British seaside postcard humour level. A saucy scene with Watson examining a female patient is but one example of this. There are also many jokes about how the Holmes/Watson relationship is perceived by others. This is of course ground that has been regularly trodden - most recently by BBC Sherlock. Whilst amusing, it does lack originality.
The book is also slightly let down by some layout issues. Some of these are possibly down to the translation from the original. Absent words from sentences and some dialogue repetition do exist but not to an extent that really hurts the overall result.
The quality of the illustrations matches and sometimes surpasses the previous books. I thoroughly enjoyed it and read it in once sitting.
Amazon UK pre orders can be made here and the .com listing can be seen here.
Written by Alistair Duncan
Buy my books here
My reviews of Kopl's A Scandal in Bohemia and The Hound of the Baskervilles can be found here and here respectively. Comic book versions of the Holmes adventures have been done before but the angle that Kopl takes (and what, I think, marks his books out) is to make a specific story the, as it were, headline act and have other stories woven in almost as supporting acts.For The Final Problem the main supporting acts or adventures are Charles Augustus Milverton and The Empty House (plus other little cameos).
This latest effort takes a slightly more bawdy turn than I remember the others doing. It reaches an almost old-style British seaside postcard humour level. A saucy scene with Watson examining a female patient is but one example of this. There are also many jokes about how the Holmes/Watson relationship is perceived by others. This is of course ground that has been regularly trodden - most recently by BBC Sherlock. Whilst amusing, it does lack originality.
The book is also slightly let down by some layout issues. Some of these are possibly down to the translation from the original. Absent words from sentences and some dialogue repetition do exist but not to an extent that really hurts the overall result.
The quality of the illustrations matches and sometimes surpasses the previous books. I thoroughly enjoyed it and read it in once sitting.
Amazon UK pre orders can be made here and the .com listing can be seen here.
Written by Alistair Duncan
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