Murder, Mrs. Hudson

Rating:
Summary: Investigating anarchists at Mr. Churchill's command
Review: Second in a series featuring the investigative exploits of Sherlock Holmes' land lady, this volume sees Mrs. Hudson engaged by the enterprising young journalist (and failed politician) Winston Churchill. An international terrorist, known as Marcos is apparently in London, and Churchill wants this confirmed and his activities looked into - is he here on a job, or just hiding from the foreign police?

I enjoyed this one more than the first - probably the "investigating a murder in a country manor" style story that one featured has been done to death. This book had a far more palpable sense of events transpiring outside Mrs. Hudson's control, and that failure was a possibility.

I have two complaints: the first, as with 'Elementary, Mrs. Hudson', is her friend Mrs. Warner's astral projection ability. In the first book, it seemed a lazy way to get the sleuths evidence. In this book, having used it in the first, Sydney Hosier seems to feel almost obliged to do so again, when this time it would have been just as easy to gain the information in another way.

Secondly, the book seemed a bit padded. While I have no problem with "character" bits in books, in fact I encourage them, there is a murder scene about halfway through which seemed somewhat gratuitous (especially the dreams that preceded it). A bit shorter and more concise would not hurt.