From the Amazon page: When Cassie Coburn moved to London, she never thought she'd be involved in a quadruple homicide. After a car accident ended her medical career before it even started, Cassie moved to London on a whim, expecting to see the sights and live the typical tourist backpacker lifestyle. Instead she finds herself accompanying a French private detective, Violet Despuis, as they attempt to find out who poisoned four people in the middle of London. Cassie's life soon includes this crazy detective, an ancient landlady with a curious past, a mischievous orange cat who likes going for walks on a leash, and a super hot pathologist that Cassie is sure is out of her league. And they haven't even found the murderer yet...The Cassie Coburn mysteries are a cozy mystery series featuring a Sherlock-Holmes style sleuth. If you want a light, fun, modern mystery featuring a San Francisco girl totally out of her element in London, and a crazy French woman who happens to be very good at noticing things, then this is the series for you.

As it says, it’s a Sherlock Holmes-style story. It was pretty obvious, though both ’Sherlock’ and ’Watson’ have their genders changed. All I can say is I like the characters, mainly Cassie. Violet is quite a bit like Sherlock - arrogant and a bit abrupt, but fun in a way. The story is well written and as I said, because I like the characters I wanted to find out what would happen. I also enjoyed reading about how Cassie made herself at home in London. As someone who has moved quite a few times in the past year, this made me nod in recognition at some of her experiences. The book is no longer free, except as an audio book, as part of an Audible trial. The paperback isn’t that expensive, and I would probably have bought it if I’d known how good it was.

I rolled again yesterday after having finished my books from roll #10, but it was too late and would have taken too long to add the new books I'm planning to read, so I deferred posting until today.  So here's where the dice are taking me in this round:

(I was going to leave the Sherlock Holmes for later, but somewhat incredibly it seems to be the only unread book in my audio library with a European monument on the cover at the moment; besides, I don't feel like double checking which of my book titles might be used to spell one of the city names, and there is, after all, no such thing as a wrong time to revisit Mr. Holmes ...)

Series: Shadow Police #3

I was a bit annoyed throughout the first part of this book because they kept making references to stuff that happened in previous books without really explaining them, and since I can barely remember the previous book, this was frustrating. And a little repetitive. However, even though the first half of the book was a bit of a slog, the resolution made it worthwhile. These books may be a good candidate for an audio reread at some point.

Technically this series was cut short but I felt that this third book managed to wrap up enough ends that although yes, there would be further things to explore in this world, I’m not frustrated with a lack of answers. The whole thing where they were trying to investigate who killed a fictional character was fun too.

Previous updates:

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I really need to get better at reading books in a series closer together. After almost three years, I remember basically nothing from the previous book even though I'm certain I've read it.

This volume contains the last two collections of Sherlock Holmes stories by Doyle. The book places Casebook first, followed by His Last Bow, although the Casebook stories were written and published after Bow. The reason for the reversal of order is that the title story of His Last Bow features an older Holmes coming out of retirement to serve as a spy catcher during World War I. It is a fitting ending place for the character, and it would have made a fine place to end the Holmes stories, but Doyle continued on.

Doyle admitted in interviews that he considered Holmes his cash cow and anytime he needed quick money he would write another Holmes story for the magazines. The stories in Casebook are not bad, but you can tell Doyle has lost interest and may have grown to dislike the character. The tone of the stories is more melodramatic than Holmes at his best. The villains are more mustache-twirly, and grizzly crime scenes are described in detail rather than being left to the reader's imagination. Two stories in Casebook are actually narrated by Holmes rather than Watson, but the results feel like a wasted opportunity. Watson always described Holmes as unfathomably brilliant, but the stories related directly by him come across almost exactly the same as Watson stories.

If you want to read the best of Sherlock Holmes, I would recommend The Adventures, Memoirs, and Return of Sherlock Holmes. Bow and Casebook are for completists.