The Disappearance of Alistair Ainsworth (Daughter of Sherlock Holmes Mystery #3)

by Leonard Goldberg

Overview

In the third book of this critically-acclaimed series, Sherlock Holmes' daughter faces a new unsolvable mystery with spies and a threat to the crown.

Joanna and the Watsons receive an unexpected visitor to 221b Baker Street during a nocturnal storm. A rain-drenched Dr. Alexander Verner arrives with a most harrowing tale.

Verner has just returned from an unsettling trip to see a patient who he believes is being held against his will. Joanna quickly realizes that Verner's patient is a high-ranking Englishman who the Germans have taken captive to pry vital information about England’s military strategies for the Great War. The man is revealed to be Alistair Ainsworth, a cryptographer involved in the highest level of national security.

The police are frantic to find Ainsworth before the Germans can use him to decode all of England’s undeciphered messages. Ainsworth must be found at all costs and Joanna and the Watsons might be the only ones who can connect the clues to find him.

USA Today bestselling author Leonard Goldberg returns with another puzzling case for the daughter of Sherlock Holmes to unravel in this exciting mystery sure to be enjoyed by fans of Sherlock Holmes, The Disappearance of Alistair Ainsworth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250621887
Publisher:	St. Martin's Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/16/2020
Series:	Daughter of Sherlock Holmes Series , #3
Pages:	320
Sales rank:	88,491
Product dimensions:	8.20(w) x 5.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Leonard Goldberg is the USA Today bestselling author of the Joanna Blalock medical thrillers. His novels have been translated into a dozen languages and were selections of the Book of the Month Club, French and Czech book clubs, and The Mystery Guild. They were featured as People’s “Page-Turner of the Week” and at the International Book Fair. After a long career affiliated with the UCLA Medical Center as a Clinical Professor of Medicine, he now lives on an island off the coast of Charleston, SC.

Editorial Reviews

04/01/2019

Set in London in 1915, Goldberg’s enjoyable third Daughter of Sherlock Holmes mystery (after 2018’s A Study in Treason) finds Holmes’s daughter, Joanna Blalock, searching for cryptographer Alistair Ainsworth, who has been kidnapped by Germans. Joanna, Dr. John Watson, and the doctor’s son (and her husband), John Jr., join forces with the police and naval intelligence officers to scour the city for Ainsworth, who, they discover, is part of a high-ranking unit charged with ensuring that the Germans can’t decipher British naval codes. Like her late father (who died in 1903, according to Goldberg), Joanna works through the logic of any puzzle presented, large or small, and fans of traditional mysteries will appreciate the way each clue is laid out for Joanna to piece together. John Jr. does an able job as narrator as the action builds to a satisfying finale. The many references to the original Sherlock Holmes adventures will please Conan Doyle fans. Agent: Scott Mendel, Mendel Media Group. (June)

Publishers Weekly

"A top-notch mystery filled with clever twists and winning characters."

-AudioFile Magazine

From the Publisher

In a remarkable performance, Steve West becomes Dr. John Watson, Jr., husband of Joanna Blalock, daughter of Sherlock Holmes. West also gives dozens of other characters honest and convincing personalities. In this third adventure John, Joanna, and Dr. Watson, Sr., are called upon to find Alistair Ainsworth, a missing cryptographer who has access to secret government information. It’s 1915. The Germans have abducted Ainsworth and are holding him prisoner, torturing him for sensitive British war plans. With only his voice, West makes each person vivid. Listeners can clearly picture young Johnny, Joanna’s precocious son. Lestrade of the Yard and Dunn of Naval Intelligence persist in jumping to wrong conclusions, and West makes their embarrassment palpable. A top-notch mystery filled with clever twists and winning characters. S.J.H. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award © AudioFile 2019, Portland, Maine

JUNE 2019 - AudioFile

2019-03-18
Joanna Watson, the daughter of Sherlock Holmes, continues to pursue the espionage investigations that have recently become her specialty (A Study in Treason, 2018, etc.).

November 1915. Dr. Alexander Verner suddenly appears at 221B Baker St. with a story for the Watson family about how he was taken in a carriage with blacked-out windows to visit a patient whose identity he was not told but who managed to communicate that he was being held captive. After Dr. Verner leaves, Joanna ponders the problem together with her husband, John Jr., and her father-in-law, Holmes amanuensis Dr. John H. Watson, concluding that the unknown man is being held by German agents who may also target Dr. Verner. They arrive at Verner's door only to find Inspector Lestrade of Scotland Yard investigating the man's disappearance. Lt. Dunn of Naval Intelligence, called to join the party, reluctantly identifies the mysterious patient as Alistair Ainsworth, a citizen who's highly prized by German spies. Because Verner's spilled chloroform on the floor, Toby Two, a hound with an amazingly sensitive nose, can track the odor to a deserted house where they find the body of Dr. Verner, tortured and strangled, but no sign of Ainsworth. Dunn finally acknowledges that the abduction of Ainsworth, one of four people in a top-secret cryptanalysis unit charged with making the British naval codes fail-safe, could spell disaster. Ainsworth's fellow workers, all brilliant and unorthodox in their methods, are both suspects and sources of help in recovering him before the Germans can break him and get the sensitive information they seek. Using her father's methods, Joanna leads the search for Ainsworth, who, despite being moved from place to place in a high-stakes game of cat and mouse, keeps hiding clues in plain sight for Joanna and her crew to follow.

Fans of all things Sherlock-ian will delight in Joanna, so like her father and already training her schoolboy son, Johnny, in the methods that have solved so many cases like this exceptionally tricky one.

Kirkus Reviews