Tea at Trianon: Sherlock Holmes: The Church Mysteries

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Monday, June 14, 2010

Sherlock Holmes: The Church Mysteries

I was exceedingly preoccupied by that little affair of the Vatican cameos, and in my anxiety to oblige the Pope I lost touch with several interesting English cases.
—Sherlock Holmes, The Hound of the Baskervilles

Sherlock Holmes: The Church Mysteries by Ann Margaret Lewis (Wessex Press, 2010) will be released this coming August. I had the pleasure and honor of reading the manuscript. Based upon snippets in the original stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Ann Lewis has ingeniously woven tales of mystery amid the liturgical cadences of Pope Leo XIII's Vatican and against the backdrop of international intrigue. Holmes and Watson are there, just as Doyle created them; it is fascinating to see the famous duo in the corridors of the papal apartments, matching wits with Leo XIII himself.

Pope Leo comes convincingly to life in the stories so that I often felt that I was sitting in the same room with him, listening to his pithy insights, sparkling with humor, a very saintly old Italian gentleman. Holmes' own religious skepticism is confronted and for once in his life he realizes that there are places where his brilliant intellect and spectacular process of discernment cannot go. Another English detective, none other than Fr. Brown, appears in one of the stories, as Ann subtly mingles literature with history, pulling together many loose threads to make a living tapestry of the past.

Sherlock Holmes: The Church Mysteries is a welcome addition to Catholic-themed literature and to literature in general. As is the way with well-written books, it would be perfect for reading aloud at night by a roaring fire. I recommend it for all ages, especially for those who can never get enough of the one and only Sherlock Holmes.

(More HERE.) Share