Review: Hound of the Hollywood Baskervilles by Elizabeth Crowens

Synopsis: Asta, the dog from the popular Thin Man series, has vanished, and production for his next film is pending. MGM Studios offers a huge reward, and that’s exactly what young private detectives Babs Norman and Guy Brandt need for their struggling business to survive. Celebrity dognapping now a growing trend, when the police and city pound ridicule Basil Rathbone and ask, “Sherlock Holmes has lost his dog?” Basil also hires the B. Norman Agency to find his missing Cocker Spaniel.The three concoct a plan for Basil to assume his on-screen persona and round up possible suspects, including Myrna Loy and William Powell; Dashiell Hammett, creator of The Thin Man; Nigel Bruce, Basil’s on-screen Doctor Watson; Hollywood-newcomer, German philanthropist and film financier Countess Velma von Rache, and the top animal trainers in Tinseltown. Yet everyone will be in for a shock when the real reason behind the canine disappearances is even more sinister than imagined.

Jump into Hounds of the Hollywood Baskervilles, Book One of the Babs Norman Golden Age of Hollywood Mystery series, Finalist in the Killer Nashville Claymore Awards for Comedy and First Prize winner in the Chanticleer Review’s Mark Twain Awards for Comedy and Satire. Get ready for its sequel, Bye, Bye, Blackbird, featuring Humphrey Bogart and the cast of The Maltese Falcon.

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I love reading about old Hollywood and the characters in the book were more than familiar to me. And I loved the take on the Sherlock Holmes story "Hound of the Baskervilles" to provide the plotline.  However, I am sorry to say that this one just did not engage with me. I could not get into the character of "Babs" and there was just too many "names dropped" to make this an even enjoyable read for me. As I mentioned in previous reviews of books from this author - the cramped narrative trips over itself.  I will not be pursuing the next in the series.

Review: Time Travelling Professor by Elizabeth Crowens

Synopsis: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle is obsessed with a legendary red book. Its peculiar stories have come to life, and rumors claim that it has rewritten its own endings. Convinced that possessing this book will help him write his ever-popular Sherlock Holmes stories, he takes on an unlikely partner, John Patrick Scott, known to most as a concert pianist, but a paranormal investigator and a time traveler professor to a select few. Like Holmes and Watson trying to solve a mystery, together they explore lost worlds and their friendship is tested to the limits when they go back in time to find it. Both discover that karmic ties and unconscionable crimes have followed them like ghosts from the past, wreaking havoc on the present and possibly the future.

I found the storytelling very disjointed; I wasn't sure there was any real structure apart from positing the narrator into various historical scenarios strung together on some invisible thread that at various times flirted with past-life regression and astral travel. Too many themes crammed together. that the narrative felt like it was tripping over itself.

I have the second in the series - A Pocketful of Lodestones - and won't be reading or reviewing it anytime soon.