It’s easy to dismiss James Patterson for not writing his own books or being too prolific or being a hack or [insert insult of choice here], but I’m a fan of giving someone a chance before condemning them, and when Holmes, Margaret and Poe (2024) — featuring three detectives with classical names “solving a series of seemingly impossible crimes” — came to my attention, well, why not check it out?

First, though, that title — or, well, those titles. When I first read it, given the famous names invoked, I thought it was called Holmes, Maigret and Poe…and, well, that’s a book I’d love to read: two deductive geniuses scouring crime scenes while a third smokes in the corner reflecting on the hopelessness of human endeavour. Instead, that central Margaret is Margaret Marple and, since the trio call themselves “Holmes, Marple and Poe Investigations” throughout, it’s clear that Aunt Jane’s surname was wanted for the cover and — I’m guessing — Agatha Christie, Ltd said ‘Er, no’ very quickly…in the UK, at least. It’s clear straight away who the model for our Lady Detective is (“[W]e know more about the different kinds of human wickedness than anyone you’ve ever met.”) so let it be noted without any subtext that I’m intrigued that ACL hold less sway in the US than in the UK.

But, to the book itself.

A year after setting themselves up in swanky New York digs, mysterious 40-sometings Brendan Holmes, Margaret Marple, and Augustus Poe foil a killer in the first 32 pages and are immediately the cream of the New York crime-solving scene. First they’re given a heads-up by Detective Lieutenant Helene Grey about a (potentially impossible…) theft of some rare books owned by boorish billionaire Huntley Bain, then the wealthy Addilyn Charles gets in touch to say her husband and sixteen year-old daughter have been kidnapped in the night (with no sign of a struggle and no forced entry into the home), then the police get in touch again because a bunch of human skeletons have been uncovered. In the midst of all this, fresh-off-the-bus Texan girl Lucy Ferry accepts a modelling job at a prestigious agency and you just know that’s going to turn out badly.

It’s…a lot, but thankfully, but this point — page 87 — we now have all the threads that will feature throughout, as if the sudden popularity of the agency ceases once everyone knows they have three cases on the boil. What follows is essentially a series of short stories that have been cut up and their pages shuffled, neither case ever overlapping with the others, and plenty of foot chases, car chases, gunplay, and the unusual experience of reading about a woman called Marple having her arse felt up by an international art thief to keep you interested.

The average chapter length is three pages, and I can’t deny that they positively fly by. A few intriguing flaws round out our central trio — Holmes has a drug habit, Poe lost the woman he loves in (possibly…) tragic circumstances, and Marple is…scared of mice (?) — and it took me until about 20 pages from the end to realise that nothing is done with any of this, because, of course, at least ten books must follow in this series (Book 2, Holmes is Missing (2025) has already been announced) so you don’t resolve, or even really define, your character issues right away. If you’re the kind of reader who isn’t looking to pay too much attention to your books, I can see why this would appeal.

I, however, am not that reader. And so this book elicits contrasting feelings in me.

Firstly, I absolutely acknowledge that not all writing must be literature. Hell, the overwhelming majority of what I read — everything on this blog, including the book I wrote — I picked up to provide some light entertainment to distract from the rigours of everyday life. So that Holmes, Margaret and Poe slides by easily and doesn’t require much of your brain while doing so is 100% a compliment that it fulfils its intention; I could not write this sort of book, and I mean that both as a compliment and as an explanation of the criticisms to follow. Because criticisms I have. And yet it’s not all negative: let’s say things balance out on the negative side, but let’s also acknowledge that the James Patterson brand is hugely successful and deserves credit for that: some of this is more interesting than I’d anticipated, which can be taken however you like.

Firstly, the characters. See, if this — like Elementary (2012-19) — was an updating of Holmes, bringing the character into the 21st century as if he had never existed before, then it would make some sort of sense. Mix in the idea that there had never been an Edgar Allan Poe or a Jane Marple and it’s the same fun principle, just expanded. But it’s made very clear that the works of Arthur Conan Doyle, Agatha Christie, and Poe exist and that our central trio — complete with mysterious pasts that Helene Grey begins to uncover without, naturally, finding too much — have modelled themselves on these historical figures, real and imagined, to the extent of even quoting their works (Holmes: “When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains…”), though with perhaps a few modern updates (Marple: “Murder brings out the bitch in me.”).

If you don’t think about it — and, I know, you’re not supposed to — it’s a fun diversion, but if you do think about it, it’s fascinating. Like, imagine the kind of mind that goes ‘I’m a heroin addict and I have a super-sensitive sense of smell — I should model myself after Sherlock Holmes!’. The rabbit hole of delusion and self-aggrandisement alone provides enough material for five books, and would honestly make a somewhat fascinating character-study alongside the minutiae of detection as the character had to face up to their own limitations and the undeniable hubris of adopting such a famous sobriquet. And it’s not like the opportunities for interesting characterisation are completely ignored — the end of chapter 92 is, if anything, somewhat amazing — but Patterson and co-writer Brian Sitts are merely scratching the surface because it’s easier to trade on famous names than to give the central decision of their series any real consideration.

Hell, maybe I’m doing them a disservice and 10 future books isn’t enough.

Mostly, though, the characters are ciphers who spout tough dialogue, win gunfights, and have access to world-altering levels of invasive technology that mean they can simply make a phone call and collate, in one fell swoop, all the evidence needed to take down a billionaire or solve the only problem in the way of finding the easiest person guilty. Hey, fuhgeddaboutit, it’s New York; how many criminals can there be? Like, six or seven?

In invoking the names of three people famously linked to crime and detective fiction, and especially in that promise of “seemingly impossible crimes”, however, the book falls apart. There’s no intrigue, no sifting of evidence, and no detection — I think Holmes smells something once, but that’s about it. Marple even fails to mention the one thing that might be a clue since she just assumes it’s not related to anything — the cases don’t overlap, remember — and then it’s used to wrap up the one remaining thread in the last 30 pages. Every time someone is suspected, they turn out to be the only suspect and therefore guilty, and the evidence is gathered mostly by getting illegal search warrants and phoning up someone well-connected who simply tells them what they want to know. It would not surprise me to learn that this entire, er, plot was A.I.-generated, so basic does it prove to be.

Those “seemingly impossible crimes” are where it really tanks in terms of what it promises vs. what it delivers, however. The vanishing of Addilyn Charles’ second husband and daughter doesn’t qualify, and the theft from Huntley Bain’s safe — deemed “impossible” by an expert thief, even for someone who had the most up-to-date skills and equipment — isn’t actually explained except that (rot13 for spoilers) bhe prageny gevb ner oruvaq vg, naq fvzcyl pnyyrq va na rkcreg gb cresbez gur gursg…jr’er arire gbyq ubj vg jnf npghnyyl qbar. Details in this universe simply do not matter, because, as mentioned, this is not a book you’re meant to pay attention to. The second you do, you stumble over sentences of a Dan Brown level of absurdity (“[He left] the room, kicking the door open with his foot.”), and probably a few that have never existed anywhere else before.

The bullet blew the erect penis right off the fertility statue.

As anything other than the sort of mindless experience that frees up your brain to ignore your life while something else passes in front of your eyes, Holmes, Margaret and Poe is very, very, very, very, very bad indeed. It displays no understanding of structure, having instead that sort of early-episode-of-a-TV-show-that-wants-to-run-for-a-long-time feature of throwing out unanswered questions that it will probably never answer, or, by the time it does, you’ll have forgotten that the answers make no sense because you’ll be on Book 14 of the series without having had to pay attention to any of it. Doubtless it has sold millions of copies, though, so clearly Patterson knows his audience…I’m just not among them.

Writing a blog that virtually no-one reads, and having written a book that virtually no-one has bought, I have to respect that James Patterson has outsold, like, everyone, and continues to shift books in the sort of quantities that are ten times what most authors would dream of. So I’m keen not to come across as bitter here, I just look for a degree of consideration, planning, structure, and purpose that Patterson has realised most people aren’t looking for, and so maybe the sensible thing would have been for me not to read this book or, having read it, not to write about it. However, I can say that my curiosity about his later work — I read a few of the early Alex Cross books 30 years ago, before Patterson was the behemoth he has become — is now satisfied and I’m happy to read not one more word the guy puts out. Good luck to him; he’ll cope without my business, and I think we can all agree that that’s completely fine.

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