{"id":23851,"date":"2019-09-21T00:16:46","date_gmt":"2019-09-21T06:16:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/?p=23851"},"modified":"2019-09-20T19:23:48","modified_gmt":"2019-09-21T01:23:48","slug":"book-review-night-watch","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/book-review-night-watch\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review: Night Watch"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><iframe style=\"width: 120px; height: 240px;\" src=\"\/\/ws-na.amazon-adsystem.com\/widgets\/q?ServiceVersion=20070822&amp;OneJS=1&amp;Operation=GetAdHtml&amp;MarketPlace=US&amp;source=ss&amp;ref=as_ss_li_til&amp;ad_type=product_link&amp;tracking_id=adamsblog03-20&amp;language=en_US&amp;marketplace=amazon&amp;region=US&amp;placement=0425191672&amp;asins=0425191672&amp;linkId=c6056015b6238367f4309efdc67cf3a1&amp;show_border=true&amp;link_opens_in_new_window=true\" frameborder=\"0\" marginwidth=\"0\" marginheight=\"0\" scrolling=\"no\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Note: A <a href=\"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/review-nightwatch\/\">version<\/a> of this review originally appeared in 2009:<\/p>\n<p>What would happen if the immortal detectives, Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown met with a brutal murder to solve?<\/p>\n<p>This is the fascinating question posed by Rev. Stephen Kendrick\u2019s 2001 Book, Night Watch. The plot of the story is that Sherlock\u2019s Holmes\u2019 brother, Mycroft, the British\u2019s government\u2019s most indispensable man as Sherlock Holmes described him, calls his younger brother in to investigate a murder. The rector of an Anglican Church is found dead in his church, with his body mutilated. The prime suspects: leaders of the world\u2019s major religions who\u2019d gathered in Britain for some inter-religious dialog. Father Brown is serving as an interpreter for a visiting Italian Cardinal.<\/p>\n<p>The murder and its solution are fantastic. However, the story is dragged down because of some errors in Kendrick\u2019s writing mechanics and also because Kendrick\u2019s story was frequently derailed from the story to Kendrick\u2019s religious agenda. In part, the book was written to back up Kendrick\u2019s assertions in Holy Clues: The Gospel According to Sherlock Holmes which seems to suggest that in Holmes later days in became someone who could best be described as \u201cspiritual and not religious.\u201d Unfortunately, the author seemed to work too hard on this angle, which distracted from the main point that readers who weren\u2019t enthusiasts of Universalism picked the book up the for: a murder mystery.<\/p>\n<p>Kendrick\u2019s treatment of Holmes, Watson, and Brown was good, but in places uneven. I found some of the conversations between Holmes and Watson not entirely believable and out of place in a mystery novel. Kendrick\u2019s Holmes was a cut below Doyle\u2019s in solving the case, and Kendrick tried a cheap out by simply saying that Doctor Watson\u2019s accounts had been exaggerated or unrealistic. To be fair, Kendrick is hardly the first author of a Holmes pastiche to use that out. What Arthur Conan Doyle created in Holmes was a bit of a mental Superman, and like Superman, it\u2019s very hard to come up with a worthy opponent for him. So, it\u2019s far easier to move the character closer to reality.<\/p>\n<p>His portrayal of Brown, while not having the flair of G.K. Chesterton, and leaving the character a little flat was still essentially the same orthodox Catholic priest that readers have come to know and love. Given that Kendrick, as a Unitarian Universalist, comes from a completely different theological perspective than Chesterton, he deserves to be commended for not trying to tamper with the character, as some interpretations have tried to change Brown into their vision of what a Christian should be rather than the character Chesterton created.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, in a two-detective story, one detective usually draws the short straw, and Brown clearly has the back seat to Holmes. However, in Chesterton\u2019s books, Brown off hung around in the background until coming forward to the solution to the crime.<\/p>\n<p>Kendrick\u2019s deserves credit for the audacity of it all. He\u2019s the first author I know of to try and bring these giants of detecting onto the same stage. And he produces an interesting, albeit not completely satisfying tome. Here\u2019s hoping that others will follow Kendrick, and this isn\u2019t the last Holmes-Father Brown crossover we see.<\/p>\n<p>Rating: 3 out of 5 stars<\/p>\n<p><em>This post contains affiliate links, which means that items purchased from these links may result in a commission being paid to the author of this post at no extra cost to the purchase<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Note: A version of this review originally appeared in 2009: What would happen if the immortal detectives, Sherlock Holmes and Father Brown met with a brutal murder to solve? This is the fascinating question posed by Rev. Stephen Kendrick\u2019s 2001 Book, Night Watch. The plot of the story is that Sherlock\u2019s Holmes\u2019 brother, Mycroft, the&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[63,123],"tags":[1272,486,3325,705],"class_list":["post-23851","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-review","category-golden-age-article","tag-brutal-murder","tag-father-brown","tag-mycroft","tag-sherlock-holmes"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pECdK-6cH","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23851","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23851"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23851\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23852,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23851\/revisions\/23852"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23851"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23851"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.greatdetectives.net\/detectives\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23851"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}