Rating: 
Summary: Depends on reader's style....
Review: Like all Sherlock Holmes books, there will be people who like an author and dislike an author. I personally greatly enjoyed this particular Sherlock Holmes series written by Larry Millet. The style of writing is very interesting and very simular to the other Holmes stories written by Millet. However, if you are expecting a book in the pictureque styles of Dr. Doyle and Dr. Bell you will be disappointed. Millet's Holmes stories are more to the tee of an Indiana Jones type than that of the Bell-Doyle Holmes character. If you prefer a Doyle Holmes over a Jones Holmes than I recommend Val Andrews or Barry Day over Larry Millet. However, if you prefer having Holmes as a secondary character in a Indiana Jones type book than you should enjoy the somewhat grotesque SHERLOCK HOLMES AND THE ICE PALACE MURDERS.
Rating: 
Summary: Hardly classic, but entertaining
Review: Sending Holmes and Watson to Minnesota, especially for a third time, is a stretch, but the story is good enough to overcome that, if the reader allows.Millett manages to tell his partly factual mystery through a narrative that's acceptably close to Watsonian style, and makes his character Shadwell Rafferty a believable and pleasant addition to the team. He is guilty of some overkill with his addition of the character Mary Comstock, whom he paints as being some combination of Professor Moriarty and Irene Adler. As such she can be no more than an obvious contrivance--there's only one Moriarty, and only one Irene Adler (who, as any Sherlockian knows, will always be "The woman" to Holmes). I'd have much rather seen Millett try to use either Moriarty or Adler in their true forms than this strange Comstock composite, which is definitely a mark against the book. Having said that, I admit I much prefer to see a pastiche author err by addition, as Millett does in this case, than to see one err by grossly reshaping a classic character. Millett avoids this, and we're left with a book that, although untraditonal in setting, can be enjoyed in most of its other features.
Rating:
Summary: Third successful case in Minnesota for Holmes and Millett
Review: Some readers of Larry Millett's Sherlock Holmes in Minnesota series (Sherlock Holmes and the Red Demon, 1996 and Sherlock Holmes and the Ice Palace Murders, 1998) might be skeptical that events described in these books actually occurred. So it is fitting, and with a certain amount of irony, that Holmes' third case in Minnesota surrounds the discovery of a rune stone describing how Norse explorers came to what is now northwestern Minnesota in 1362. This is, of course a very thinly veiled Kensington Rune Stone "a highly disputed artifact since the day it was unearthed," says Millett in his afterword. Next to publishing Holmes's cases (they were written by Holmes' companion Dr. John Watson) Milllett, writer and editor at the St. Paul Pioneer Press) is best known for his books and articles on the architectural history of Minneapolis and St. Paul. It is March 1899. Millett adeptly captures the familiar opening of many of Holmes' cases: a cozy scene in the sitting rooms of 221B Baker Street and Holmes lamenting the dearth of inspiring crime. Indeed Millett's Holmes has come to sound eerily like the Holmes of Conan Doyle: "I am a ship without a rudder adrift on an empty sea. The criminals of London, it would seem, have suffered a collective failure of the imagination, for which I must pay the price." Fortuitously arriving on this scene is an agent for King Oskar II of Sweden. Upon hearing of the amazing discovery of a rune stone depicting Viking explorers in North America predating Christopher Columbus, Oskar decided that the stone should be brought to Sweden. At his behest Holmes is to find proof "that the stone itself cannot under any circumstances be a modern forgery." Though the prospect of another trip to Minnesota is "hardly pleasing" to Watson, he and Holmes agree to investigate. As fate would have it, the farmer who discovered the stone is murdered, "his skull split down the middle like a ripe watermelon", and the stone stolen the very day Holmes and Watson arrive. By happy coincidence, (and as Holmes remarks, "Coincidence the tribute reason must occasionally pay to fate."), Shadwell Rafferty, barkeeper, sometime detective, and last seen in the Ice Palace Murders is also on the case. In that adventure, Rafferty and Holmes engage in a friendly rivalry. Here, they operate on equal footing, almost in partnership with a synergy that invigorates every scene in which they appear together. Millett, over the course of these three novels has become more comfortable and more confident with Holmes, Watson and Rafferty who return as welcome friends. His plots, whether simple or elaborate, entertain and never fail to absorb. It is difficult to predict if additional accounts of Holmes' work in Minnesota will crop up, or if further of adventures of Shadwell Rafferty alone will be unearthed. Either or both should be greeted with enthusiasm by the multitude of Holmes fans, the gathering host of Rafferty fans, or anyone just looking for a well-wrought tale.
Rating: 
Summary: Strays from Conan Doyle
Review: The story here had some promise, but Millett ruined it by injecting again (as in his "Ice Palace") the character of Mary Comstock. His late 1990s mind-set and desire to attract women readers allowed him to stray away from the spirit of the Canon by having her foil Holmes' attempts to bring her to justice. Perhaps we should be lucky Millett did not have Holmes fall in love with and marry her.
Rating:
Summary: Strays from Conan Doyle
Review: The story here had some promise, but Millett ruined it by injecting again (as in his "Ice Palace") the character of Mary Comstock. His late 1990s mind-set and desire to attract women readers allowed him to stray away from the spirit of the Canon by having her foil Holmes' attempts to bring her to justice. Perhaps we should be lucky Millett did not have Holmes fall in love with and marry her.
Rating: 
Summary: Rochester?
Review: This book did not live up to my expectations based on the prior two books. Can anyone who has read it figure out why Kensington didn't know what the reference to "Rochester" meant? This lapse in thinking by the author put a big damper on the book as far as I am concerned.
Rating:
Summary: Written in the Doyle Style
Review: This is the third in the "Sherlock Holmes in Minnesota" saga and it follows the others in style and story. If you are a lover of the Holmes genre and gobble up what you can of the pastiches being offered by so many today, you are either gravely disappointed or surprisingly gratified. The story must capture the spirit of Holmes and Watson so brilliantly done by Doyle many years ago. The key to all such imitations is, of course, style of writing. Millett has suceeded in capturing Doyle's style. I find little fault in the way Watson or Holmes utter their dialogue. This is what makes me feel at home with a pastiche. It is the Holmes and Watson you recognize from the "canon". Millett has done his homework, has provided an acceptable story line and entertains us with this book.
Rating:
Summary: Written in the Doyle Style
Review: This is the third in the "Sherlock Holmes in Minnesota" saga and it follows the others in style and story. If you are a lover of the Holmes genre and gobble up what you can of the pastiches being offered by so many today, you are either gravely disappointed or surprisingly gratified. The story must capture the spirit of Holmes and Watson so brilliantly done by Doyle many years ago. The key to all such imitations is, of course, style of writing. Millett has suceeded in capturing Doyle's style. I find little fault in the way Watson or Holmes utter their dialogue. This is what makes me feel at home with a pastiche. It is the Holmes and Watson you recognize from the "canon". Millett has done his homework, has provided an acceptable story line and entertains us with this book.
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