GoodReads meta-data is 252 pages, rated 3.54 by 129 litizens.
Genre: krimi
Verdict: flying start, shuddering halt.
MetroPlex Studios begins pre-production work on a film version of Sherlock Holmes’s story The Speckled Band. So far so normal. What is less than normal is that for reasons unknown the studio has hired a screenwriter for the project who loathes the Sherlock Homes stories and is loathed by the Irregulars. He is one Stephen Worth, a vulgar representative of the Hard-Boiled School of Detective Fiction of the gentlemanly Dashiell Hammet and Raymond Chandler. As the fiction gods would have it Worth has an impregnable contract for the job and a clause that prevents the Studio from making the film without his script.
As the protests roll in from the keepers of the Holmes faith, the head of the Studio has a bright idea. He will employ a selection of these Irregulars as technical consultants. Their intrusion might cause Worth to quit, and if not, their intrusion might steer the project to a lee shore. It’s win either way. What can possibly go wrong?
We all know that answer to that closing rhetorical question, now don’t we. ‘Everything,’ in a word.
The five Irregulars whom he brings to California, houses, and hosts squabble among themselves over minutiae of the sacred canon in their competition for acclaim as the one true prophet of Holmes. Worth, the screenwriter nemesis, becomes even more obnoxious — some had thought that was not possible, but they were proven wrong — and determined to see the task through and tells everyone that, right to the moment he stops talking, because, Jim, he is d-e-a-d.
As the wind carries the news of the dissension and then the demise, Studio creditors begin to circle. All of this activity rouses journalists to smell the blood, and they splash headlines which prove that there is such a thing as bad publicity.
A roller coaster ride ensues, as the loyal Maureen tries to manage the situation while the police investigate, as the Irregulars pontificate.
It starts fast and then bogs down into an all-talky drawing room investigation that takes most of the air our of the proceedings.