Fans of Sherlock Holmes should enjoy this Kate Martinelli detective story which combines a Sherlock Holmes mystery with a modern day San Francisco murder and a body left at a park overlooking the Golden Gate Bridge. This is the fifth outing in the Kate Martinelli series by an author who has been an Agatha Award Best Novel nominee, an Edgar Awards Best Novel nominee, and a Macavity Awards Best Novel winner for her 2002 novel, "Folly."

Novelist Laurie R. King is the author of two very different mystery series, both starring female detectives. One features Kate Martinelli, a modern day detective with the San Francisco police, while the other features Mary Russell, a young, preternaturally intelligent teenager who works with King's recreation of Sherlock Holmes as an early Twentieth Century sleuth. King has commented that Mary Russell is something of an alter ego for her, an expression of who she wished she might have been had she been able to live her dream life.  

King started writing during the late Eighties, but her inaugural novel, "A Grave Talent," the first Kate Martinelli mystery, wasn't published until 1993 when she was in her early forties. Quickly following that book was her first Mary Russell mystery, "The Beekeeper's Apprentice," which was published in 1994, and since then she has averaged about a novel a year. King is a third generation native of San Francisco on her mother's side, but at different times she and her husband have lived all over the world. Lately they divide their time between homes in California and England.

The genius of authors is that they will grasp an innocuous bit of common knowledge and turn it into the foundation for a new novel. They see a story whereas we only see trivia, and this well written detective story starring San Francisco cop Kate Martinelli is a perfect example of this. The trivia that King turned into this novel is the fact that during his travels around the world, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle  spent quite some time in California. The author posits that while there Doyle was inspired to write a novel, hitherto undiscovered and unpublished, about Sherlock Holmes being on a case in San Francisco. 

Detective Martinelli is called to a murder scene at Point Bonita Park in Marin County, which is normally outside the jurisdiction of the San Francisco police. It was obvious to the Marin County detectives that the body had been transported from somewhere else since it was found dressed in pajamas and lying on the floor of the DuMaurier Battery, a Nineteenth Century gun placement. They logically deduced that the corpse came from San Francisco, since oddball murders like this simply don't happen to the more normal Marin County residents.

When the identity of the "vic" is found to be that of Philip Gilbert, a 53 year old bachelor who lived in a tasteful area of San Francisco, Kate Martinelli is called to his elegant Victorian house. She is completely unprepared for what she sees when she enters the large Victorian home. The interior down to the smallest details is a faithful recreation of the fictional Sherlock Holmes' apartment at 221 B Baker Street with even a "V. R." punched into the wall and a slipper filled with pipe tobacco. There are no light switches and no electricity, so with some trepidation they light the ancient gas lamps and end up with a still dimly lit interior.

Only the third floor was modernized as an office with a comfortable leather chair and a computer, a necessity for this dealer in antiquities who shopped by internet all over the world. It turns out that Philip Gilbert was a respected international dealer in Doyle artifacts, many of which are on display in his home. He was also the founder of a San Francisco group known as the Strand Diners, and they occasionally dressed up in period costume and dined at his house.  

Rumors of Gilbert having discovered a lost Doyle manuscript percolate through the small group of Strand Diners, and Kate wonders if this was the reason for his murder. She further wonders if the murderer is a member of this group, more particularly, if it might have been one of the male members, since someone had to be pretty strong to carry the body some distance from the park road to the DuMaurier Battery. More curiously though, why was it placed there, of all places?

In her off hours Kate lives a quintessentially San Francisco lifestyle with her lifetime same sex partner, Lee, and Lee's daughter, Nora, in a modest home in a quiet neighborhood. Given this background, the novel contains more current political commentary than what I am used to reading in my mysteries where I try to escape from daily politics. I could have done without that. In addition, the author chose to include the entire contents of the "lost Doyle manuscript" within the pages of this book. Some may view this as a bonus, but I view it as a distraction. There's a good story here, but the author danced around too many other topics and included too many unessential details. 2006, Bantam Books, a division of Random House.