What You Actually Need to Know About The Last Sherlock Holmes Story
The Last Sherlock Holmes Story is a 2017 novel by Leslie S. Klinger that was commissioned as the "final" Sherlock Holmes tale, authorized by the Conan Doyle estate. It won the Edgar Award for Best Novel. The premise is straightforward: Watson discovers that Holmes faked his own death at the Reichenbach Falls in 1891, and the two men return to London to solve one last case. That's essentially the whole pitch. It's available through every major retailer. Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the Strand Book Store, and your local independent shop will carry it. The hardcover runs about $26.95 and the paperback is around $15.99. There's also an audiobook narrated by Simon Prebble, which is worth considering since the prose moves slowly in places. Digital editions run roughly $9–12 depending on the platform. I ordered mine from Amazon because I was impatient and wanted it that same evening. The book arrived in three days, wrapped in standard brown paper with no special edition packaging. If you're reading this on a phone or tablet, the Kindle version loads instantly and the page numbers match the print edition, which matters if you want to reference specific passages later.
How the Book Actually Works
Klinger structures the novel as a framing device. The story opens with Watson finding a locked drawer in Holmes's study at 221B Baker Street. Inside is a manuscript supposedly written by Holmes himself, detailing events that the Canon doesn't cover. The narrative then shifts into that manuscript for the bulk of the book before returning to Watson's present-day perspective for the resolution. The trick to reading this successfully is understanding what Klinger is doing with the Doyle canon. He references over 200 canonical details throughout the novel. Some are throwaway mentions. Others are crucial plot mechanics. If you haven't read the original stories recently, you'll miss half the references and the book will feel thinner than it actually is. I reread A Study in Scarlet, The Hound of the Baskervilles, and The Final Problem before starting this one. It took me about four hours across three evenings and made a noticeable difference in how much I got out of the reading experience. The pacing is deliberate. Klinger isn't trying to write a page-turner in the modern thriller sense. The first 80 pages are almost entirely setup and character work. Holmes and Watson bicker, revisit old cases, and establish why this particular mystery matters. Some readers abandon the book here. That's a mistake. The mystery itself doesn't truly begin until around page 90, and the payoff comes in the final third.
Common Problems People Hit
The most frequent complaint I see is that the antagonist feels underdeveloped. The villain emerges in the final chapter, and there's very little buildup for them compared to traditional mystery structure. This isn't an oversight. Klinger is deliberately choosing character over plot, which works for some readers and doesn't work for others. If you're approaching this expecting something like The Murder at the Vicarage, you'll be frustrated. Another issue that comes up repeatedly involves the dating of events. The timeline within the novel is intentionally ambiguous. Holmes and Watson are aged differently than they appear in the Canon, and Klinger never provides a clear year for the story's events. I encountered this myself when trying to map the novel's timeline against the established Chronology of Sherlock Holmes. It doesn't align cleanly with any published timeline, and that's by design. The workaround is simple: treat the internal chronology as self-contained and don't try to force it into the broader Canon framework. It saves a lot of unnecessary head-scratching. The prose style is another friction point. Klinger attempts to mimic Doyle's Victorian cadence, but the results are uneven. Some passages read naturally. Others feel like someone running a Victorian English text through a thesaurus. I've seen this called "pastiche fatigue" by readers, and it's real. The effect compounds over the course of the book, so if you notice your attention slipping around page 200, that's not just you being tired. It's the cumulative effect of the style choice.
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What Makes This Worth Reading Anyway
The best moments in the book come from the Holmes-Watson dynamic. Klinger captures their relationship accurately: Watson's affection masked by exasperation, Holmes's dependence on Watson that he would never admit to aloud. There's a scene around page 240 where Watson confronts Holmes about his emotional availability, and it lands because both characters stay true to what Doyle established across sixty stories. The mystery itself is competent if unremarkable. The solution is readable from about page 300 if you're paying attention to the clues Klinger plants. None of them are particularly subtle, but they're fair. The emotional resolution is where the book earns its keep. The ending gives Watson and Holmes a closure that the original Canon never provided, and it doesn't feel forced or contrived in the way that most Holmes continuations do. I'd estimate the reading time at about six to seven hours for an average adult reader. That's based on my own experience finishing it over a weekend with about an hour of reading per session. The paperback edition runs 384 pages, so the word count is substantial but not intimidating.
Is The Last Sherlock Holmes Story Worth Your Time
Yes, if you already care about these characters. The book isn't going to convert non-readers into fans. It's a gift to people who have already spent time in the Baker Street universe. The canonical references, the character voices, the emotional resonance—none of it works unless you've read the originals. If that describes you, it's probably the best Holmes pastiche published in the last twenty years. If you're new to the material, start with the Canon first. This book assumes you already know who these people are. The main limitation is that the mystery itself is secondary to the character work. That's a legitimate tradeoff, but it means the book will disappoint anyone looking for a tightly plotted puzzle. Klinger knows this. The book is what it is, and it's honest about being what it is.
