The Cthulhu Casebooks: Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea Devils by James Lovegrove

We seem to be all things Lovecraft at Hothouse right now, what with reviews from the second  London Lovecraft Festival currently packing them in at Islington’s The Old Red Lion Theatre, we have just finished reading the final installment of James Lovegrove’s The Cthulhu Casebooks, Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea Devils, published by our good friends at Titan Books.

Following on from the adventures begun in Sherlock Holmes and the Shadwell Shadows and Sherlock Holmes and the Miskatonic Monstrosities this new Cthulhu Casebook takes place in the autumn of 1910. The great detective has retired to the Sussex coast after 15 long years of battling R’lluhloig, the Hidden Mind who has taken possession of Professor Moriarty. As Europe creeps ever closer to war in a single night all of the most eminent members of the Diogenes club appear to commit suicide.

Holmes suspects R’lluhloig is responsible and the game is afoot. Seeking vengeance an adventure in subterranean London leads Holmes and Watson to an encounter with a tribe of snakemen and costs an old friend his life. Retreating back to Holmes’s cottage on the Sussex Downs they are called in to investigate the abduction of three women from the nearby town of Newford. What’s so strange about that you may ask? Well the kidnappers appear to have gills and are said to live in a city beneath the sea. And so the scene is set for Holmes’s final show down with the Sussex Sea Devils and the Dark Lords themselves.

I thoroughly enjoyed Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea Devils. It has exactly what I want from a Holmes pastiche; the familiar cast of Baker Street’s characters (although these are fast diminishing thanks to the ravages of time), the expert deduction and exposition and a cracking adventure story tinged with elements of steampunk and the supernatural. What I particularly like about Lovegrove’s take on Holmes is that he seems to have captured the authentic voice of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle which makes his Holmes/Lovecraft adventures so much more genuine and Holmesian than those Lois H Gresh in her Sherlock Holmes V Cthulhu series.

A cracking adventure we give Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea Devils a 666/666.

Sherlock Holmes and the Sussex Sea Devils is published by Titan Books in a lovely hardback edition price £12.99 UK $19.99 US.

Lovegrove is also the author of, shall we say a number of more ‘real world’ Sherlock Holmes adventure including: The Stuff of Nightmares, Gods of War and The Thinking Engine all available from Titan Books.