Sherlock Holmes vs. Cthulhu: The Adventure of the Deadly Dimensions

Sherlock Holmes has tackled some baffling mysteries in his time, including some that seemed damn near supernatural. But never has he seen anything like the peculiar murders plaguing London. Odd stacks of bones, adorned with a spherical artifact of unknown origin, are all that remain of several victims. When a monstrous machine nearly kills Watson’s family and threatens the city, Holmes realizes the stakes are greater than ever before. The very fabric of reality is at stake here.

The Adventure of the Deadly Dimensions is the first in a new Lovecraft-inspired trilogy of Holmes adventures, so you can be forgiven for wondering why a book about the Cult of Dagon is titled after Cthulhu.

That being said, this is a strange read, because Holmes is stripped of one of his greatest assets — and one of the real selling points in Holmes stories — his ability to deduce through observation. Dealing with unknowable evil from another dimension is way beyond Holmes’s ken, and it often feels like he’s just ricocheting from clue to clue instead of building a case.

Although The Adventure of the Deadly Dimensions was a suitable launching pad, I’m hoping for bigger and better things in the later installments.